


every little thing (is gonna be alright)

by lollercakes



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:14:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 68,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23297596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lollercakes/pseuds/lollercakes
Summary: It falls apart in an instant and all at once there's no going back. How do you fix yourself when everything you've worked so hard to build begins to crumble beneath your feet?The Scarif mission goes wrong. Cassian can't get past it and Jyn fights to stay afloat as they figure out how to keep living in the aftermath of tragedy.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 58
Kudos: 79





	1. BEFORE

**Author's Note:**

> Okay - I've never written for this fandom before so please note that if you continue on. I'm not good with Star Wars canon - tbh I've got very little knowledge of all of the crazy backstory stuff that exists in this realm and so this is an AU centered around characters I couldn't get out of my head. Don't come at @me with any points on how things might be wrong - I'm making it up as I go! But if you do enjoy it, feel free to drop me a note ;)

_ Cassian _

He’d done this type of mission before. Headquarters brings him in, briefs him, then sends him out into the wild to do the impossible. He was their fixer, the guy they called when things weren’t going right and they needed someone to just get it done. It had become almost routine in its predictability and he’d almost  _ appreciated _ that, the knowing just how things were going to go so that at the end he could get home unfazed. 

But this mission was not going along like all of those other missions. It was falling apart at the seams, ripping and fraying into hundreds of tiny bits that he tried to pickup as he went so that he could paste it all back together when he got to the other side. 

It’s just - there was no other side. Not this time. 

Day in and day out he slogged through his meetings, met with his team and tried to stem the tide of failure that seemed to colour every report and every attempt they made at getting the mission done. They were trying so hard to keep things afloat but no matter what they did they struggled too and it was starting to show. Clinics opened, then closed without warning and his team couldn’t keep ahead of the ever changing curve. Staff disappeared and got sick and the government would cancel procurement contracts before they even got their second shipments leaving the functioning clinics at a near standstill. It was a mess and no matter what he did to try to get ahead, there was no real victory. 

The days were blending together, the nights dissipating like a fog. He barely slept, arguing with his deputy that it was the time change even though they both knew it wasn’t. The mission was a loss and he was taking it personally, every document sent back to HQ signed with his signature and marking his shortcomings again and again and again until he could just picture the mountain of paperwork waiting for him at his debriefing. A forest of dead trees, reminding him of the people he couldn’t save, the shadows of the dead ready to linger over him. 

At night when most of the group had returned to their quarters he would sit at the dinner table and nurse a beer or two. It had been a chance for him to think in the quiet evening, the rustling noises of people settling into bed or calling back home keeping him company as he watched the stars float overhead. The time had been a reprieve, albeit a bit lonely, but he’d been okay with that after days spent having conversations and sneaking his way through difficult negotiations. 

Until Jyn Erso started staying late at the table with him. She was new to the Alliance, fresh to missions but wholly capable of getting her tasks done. He’d appreciated her stark communication style and her willingness to push the boundaries on their regulations to the point where she managed a few creative breakthroughs. The first night she’d lingered he’d watched her from the corner of his eye, unsure if she wanted him to talk or if she was comfortable to just sit in silence. It had thankfully been the latter and when finally they’d turned in she’d said goodnight almost in a whisper, unwilling to break the quiet. 

After that she became almost a fixture in his evenings, their conversation slowly evolving beyond work and to talk of life at home. She was a technical consultant, single, orphaned after an incident with her parents but somehow still carving out a life for herself. He’d shared that he was much the same with the exception that this work was all he did - almost every other month he was off somewhere new working on fixing problems that were uniquely human. 

One night she’d asked if he was tired of the struggle. He’d shrugged and looked at his beer. She’d taken his hand and held it the same way he had held hers when her voice had wavered on the loss of her mother. He’d kissed her that night, tucked up against a dark wall, before they’d parted ways to their own rooms to turn in. He shouldn’t have done it - not as the team leader, not as someone who needed to keep a level head - but the smile she’d shared as she’d said goodnight had done something to him and he couldn’t have stopped himself if he tried. 

The evenings were the one bright spot in his day and he tried to drag the feelings of contentedness into the rest of his waking life but it was harder to do than he expected. So he buckled down and tried to keep from getting lost in the failures, tried to focus on just getting through the mission so he could get home - get his team home - and reset before he went back out again. 

Maybe he would have recovered differently from it though had it not all fallen apart at the very end. 

It was two days until they were scheduled to wrap up their rotation and fly back home. Two days left to fight against the system and the disaster that was the team’s daily task list of helping setup clinics along Scarif’s turbulent border. 

Sitting heavily in a folding chair at the corner of his office, Cassian Andor holds his head in his hands and rubs fitfully at his temples. His hair is askew and dark circles throw haunting marks under his eyes, his chest aching with the stress of everything that felt like it was closing in on him. He wanted to go back to bed, sleep until it was time to catch his flight, but that wasn’t an option. 

“Captain, we’re ready to head out to visit Clinic Four - are you accompanying again?” Bodhi Rook asks from the doorway, his long hair pulled back from his face in some semblance of looking put together for the site visit.

“Yes. Just need a moment,” Cassian answers gruffly and glances to his logs counterpart, looking over his own weary appearance. This mission wasn’t going well for any of them, that much was clear. 

“Right. We’ll hold at the gate then. Don’t forget your grab bag and water, Shara said there’s apparently increased checkpoints today so we might be on the road for a bit,” Bodhi adds and then disappears, leaving Cassian to get to his feet with a grunt. 

He stands silently for a moment, exhaustion running through his veins as he looks around the small space. It’s dark and cramped and the equipment is half dead, HQ having been running this mission for too long by the time he’d arrived to make it salvagable. Or, at least, that’s what he needed to tell himself for why nothing he’d tried to implement had worked. 

With a sigh and a tilt of his head to briefly close his eyes, Cassian lets out a groan and reaches for his grab bag. Running through his mental checklist, he looks over his documents, parses through his first aid kit and then tosses in a couple bottles of water and some power bars to get him through the next few hours. It was a routine trip but he hated being caught out on the road without anything to get him through the long drive, his experience reminding him that there was nothing worse than being at a checkpoint for hours, attempting to be diplomatic through your hunger as the local groups ran your documents to hell and back on foot. 

It's a quiet miracle then when the team makes it to the clinic without any hiccups, the guards on the way seemingly unconcerned with their transit along the dirt roads. Inside the small building the local medical staff are working hard at seeing every patient they can in the limited daylight hours they have. The team gets to work with little fanfare, Bodhi checking the supplies while Shara Bey talks to the outreach team and Jyn runs diagnostics on the function of some of the equipment. Cassian keeps a silent tally of the findings, marking the status of the clinic down on their sheets for follow-up by the incoming team. 

From the sidelines he watches it all unfold with a measured gaze, speaking with his local counterpart and trying to gauge what the day-to-day troubles were so he could write a better report for his handover. Sure, he hadn’t met  _ his _ objectives of getting more clinics up and running consistently to help stem the outbreak before it spread further but the ones he had been able to establish were relatively stable and only needed logistics and materials support to keep helping the fluctuating population. That was something, at least. Maybe he could be proud of that tiny, miniscule, victory in the scale of losses that he was tallying.

“Ready to head out, Captain?” Their driver, Tivik, calls to him, the man’s eyes flicking around the clinic nervously as Cassian turns to face him. Making a mental note to ask the man how his family is when they get back, Cassian follows his team out to the car and climbs into the passenger seat. 

The tension in his shoulders eases slightly as they turn back towards their station, the long road spreading out before them as Cassian watches the trees pass in a dense wall of green. Protocol dictated that the window of the passenger side had to be down an inch while en route but there’s a small part of him that wishes he could close it and block out the scent of the jungle, of the mass of people just beyond the trees. It was not the smell of moss and sweet water - it was darker, thicker, and told of the struggle plaguing the region.

Jyn had told him a few nights ago over drinks in the canteen that her dreams had started to feel like this place, that the suffocating heat and the burn of the sun had snuck into the world in her mind that he’d been slowly gathering glimpses of over the last month. He’d wanted to tell her that his own dreams were tinged too, the sounds following him everywhere, but he’d considered it an unnecessary crack to put on display and had nodded understandingly as she looked out at the night from their perch. 

It was time for him to go home, he’d determined. He needed to decompress. He needed out of the heavy restrictions that followed him everywhere, the check-ins and curfew, the stress of his failures and the lack of resources that made everything that much harder. His team was suffering and they weren’t doing the good they’d signed up for and Cassian couldn’t make it any better for them. He wanted to help the people here but it was breaking them to keep trying and he knew that if they kept pushing it would only make them bitter and ineffective. 

Cassian needed to go home. His team needed to go home.

The slamming of the vehicle’s brakes jerks him out of his daze, his eyes snapping open as he looks towards Tivik who struggles to keep the car on the road as they slide through the sand. 

“What the fuck?” Jyn shouts from behind him, her body crashing into the back of his seat with a thump. 

“Jyn, if your seatbelt was not on before, it better be before I look at you,” Cassian growls as he watches Tivik shift uneasily in his seat. He didn't have the energy to scold her, not today. Especially because she should have known better - she knew that seatbelts were not optional while the vehicle was moving, that the risk of injury was too high on these unfinished roads. More importantly, she  _ knew _ he hated when the team put themselves at risk when they didn’t need to - she knew that about him, had run her fingers over the pulse point in his wrist as he confided in her about his fears of someone getting hurt, of having to call their families and explain why their loved one wasn't coming home. She'd _ felt _ his fear.

“Captain,” Tivik hisses, his hand pointing out the windshield to where men seem to be bleeding out of the forest walls. 

They’re dressed in green fatigues, helmets on their heads and guns heavy in their hands. Cassian swallows the bile in his throat as he looks at the group, the members along the edge getting progressively younger and younger until the final member to emerge from the trees is not much taller than his own weapon. 

“Everyone stay calm. Have your IDs ready and let me do the talking, alright?” Cassian orders, glancing back to see his team pulling their IDs out of their shirts and Jyn clipping her seatbelt back into place. They nod at him and sit still, prepared to wait silently for the unmarked checkpoint to let them through. 

“He’s with the Imperials,” Tivik says lowly, his hands twisting on the wheel until his knuckles turn white. 

Cassian tries to recall everything he knows about the Imperial faction, his mind coming up blank as he mentally spins through everything he knows about this mission. The sleep deprivation and general exhaustion has him scrambling for his thoughts, coherency fleeting as he tries to think of anything that will give him the upper hand in this exchange. But he comes up empty, all of his missions blending together in a haze of warring groups and people fleeing conflict. It was too much.

“What is your purpose on this road?” A man asks through the driver’s side window, the thin crack of the open window and his accent making his words mesh together. 

Cassian looks to the man, can feel Tivik and the team’s eyes on him, waiting for him to respond. He opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out, his words stalling in his throat. 

“Captain,” Tivik’s voice whispers, his face turning pale as he looks between the man with the gun and Cassian as he freezes. 

“Captain? Are you military?” The man asks louder, clearer, and crowds into the door of the vehicle. “Your markings are non-military. You cannot travel under these markings if - “ 

“We’re not military,” Shara calls and Cassian feels a cold finger run down his spine, the man’s eyes tracking into the darkness of the rear passenger area. 

“Quiet, Shara,” Cassian hisses,  _ finally _ finding his voice. He looks at the man and tries to draw his attention back to him, moving his hand towards the papers on the dash slowly. “We’re not military sir. ‘Captain’ is a nickname that I have been given. My name is Cassian Andor and we were out checking on Clinic Four near the - “ 

“Get out of the vehicle, everyone!” The man shouts, tapping the barrel of his weapon on the hood of the car. Cassian looks back at his team and pointedly grabs his go bag, slipping it on his shoulders as he makes to climb out of the car. They all follow suit, lining up along the side of the road and keep their eyes trained towards the ground. 

“Sir, we have our identification - “ Cassian attempts but is cut off by the man’s shout. 

“Search the vehicle and their bags. Take anything of value or use. If you find weapons, bring them to me,” he demands. 

“There are no weapons in that vehicle. We do not carry weapons,” Cassian assures and beside him he hears Tivik inhale sharply, a sliver of fear sparking within Cassian at the sound. “We are returning to our duty station for the night. We do not wish to have any conflict with you - “ 

“Quiet!” The man shouts and abruptly knocks the butt of his gun into Cassian’s back. Cassian wants to drop, to recover the air he’s lost with the impact, but he forces his knees to lock and his body to stay upright as Bodhi grabs at his arm to steady him. His spine splinters pain out through his limbs, down into his toes until it bubbles up to his teeth.

One of the younger boys - why did it have to be  _ kids _ ? - pulls at his go-bag, jerking it from his shoulders until it drops to the ground. The kid tears at the zipper and dumps the contents into the dirt, sifting through the items while Cassian's mind flickers to a memory of when he'd been the boy's age, rifling through someone's bag on the subway. He'd needed the five bucks he'd found for food, just like this kid probably needed the mess of power bars he shoves in his pockets.

"Just leave me my papers," Cassian says lowly, so only the boy can hear. The butt of the rifle jabbing into his ribs tells him he wasn't quiet enough. 

Teeth clenched around a grunt of pain, Cassian watches as a huddle of kids dig through every inch of the vehicle. When they reach the trunk, Tivik moans a tiny whining sound as they pull at a black bag and its contents spill across the dirt. Cassian can almost feel his heartbeat stall as what looks like shell casings roll out into the dirt. 

“That’s not ours,” Jyn states and Cassian shoots her a warning look, desperate for her to keep her mouth shut and let him try to talk their way out of this. 

He doesn’t get the chance. The man leaves from where he’s hovering over Cassian to walk down the line and scuff his boot against the bullets, spreading them out for a closer picture. Without a word he turns around and looks at the group, his mask unreadable. 

“No weapons? Do you all lie?” He hisses and moves to stand next to Jyn, his gaze burning into hers as she looks up at him defiantly. Cassian watches in slow motion as the man lifts his arm up and backhands her across the cheek, sending her stumbling to the side and down onto the ground. Bodhi instinctively moves to help her but is pulled up by the collar, the man’s angry hand a tight fist at his neck as she slowly gets back to her feet. “Tell me what your true purpose is on our road.” 

“They are telling the truth. The bullets are mine - not theirs. I came from visiting my son in the south and we needed to travel - “ Tivik starts to say, stepping past Cassian and pleading with the man as he slowly turns towards him, releasing Bodhi’s collar as he does. 

“Shh, Tivik,” Cassian urges, grabbing at the driver’s wrist and trying to stop him from advancing further. It doesn’t work and soon Tivik is trying to reason with the man, explaining his story of travelling and needing protection from the rebels but forgetting to remove everything before coming to work. 

“On your knees! All of you!” The man says loudly, ignoring Tivik and shoving at Jyn’s shoulder until she collapses forward onto her hands and knees. Cassian watches with a snap of furious heat bursting within him as she gasps and steadies, the dust curling around her as her expression turns to iron. In another second she’s pulling back, easing onto her knees and freezing in place with her gaze focused straight forward. He wants to go to her but - 

“ _ Cassian _ ,” Bodhi urges, breaking him from his stare and tugging him down towards the ground, forcing him to obey. He goes reluctantly, gaze flickering to Jyn and his hands linking behind his head as the man circles around them. 

“There’s nothing else, sir,” the young boy calls from around the car, completing his search and holding out a handful of bullets that had spilled from the bag. “This was all there was.” 

"Nothing like that in their bags either, sir," the boy with full pockets declares, his voice wavering slightly.

Cassian tries to hope, tries to take it as another small victory as he looks up at the man and watches him with held breath. 

“You try to deceive me, try to trick me into letting you pass with false identities,” he says lowly, his fingers pulling the bullets from the child’s hand. “On your knees!” He shouts again and Tivik is flung to the ground by the man, his words turning blurry as he tries to beg in the language he’d learned from boyhood. 

“We don’t mean to deceive you, sir,” Cassian starts, pauses as the angry eyes flash in his direction. “It was a mistake. We do not travel under false banners and we do not wish anyone harm. Please let us go and we will continue on our way and leave this road - “ 

“You cannot travel under these markings with weapons,  _ Captain _ ,” the man growls. 

Down the line of kneeling bodies Cassian hears Shara whimper, the implied threat making her tears audible. Beside him Jyn is taunt, her eyes staring listlessly forward and her breathing tight. Cassian knows the pain in her chest, feels it echoed in his own but can do nothing to ease it. It's all gotten so madly out of control.

“You must pay the toll for travelling these lands with weapons against us. Stop pleading, old man!” Tivik stops his rambling, the silence almost deafening. 

“Please, sir, please just let us return to our station and we won’t travel these roads again. We only mean to - “ 

Cassian’s words do nothing to garner favour and the man with the helmet lifts his weapon and fires one clean shot into the back of Tivik’s head as Cassian watches with fear striking through him. 

Shara screams and collapses to her hands, vomiting as the sight overtakes her. Bodhi drops down beside her and pulls her towards him before looking up at Cassian, fear colouring every inch of his expression. Jyn’s eyes close, her brow tight and her breathing frozen. Shock ripples through the team and all Cassian can think of is that they’re all going to die if he doesn’t do something soon. 

A calm numbness spreads through him at the situation around him, his heart nearly ceasing to beat as time moves in a heavy shift forward. Before him the blood starts to pool in the dirt and he feels the loss like a weight on his chest, his spine like concrete as he tries to force himself to move. He needed to go to Tivik, to check his vitals and help him. His first aid kit was in his bag - if he could just stop the bleeding and get him back to the clinic - 

“You can’t save him now,” the man growls as he lurches Cassian back from where he’d crawled over to try to stem the bleeding. “Get in your vehicle,  _ Captain _ , and go home. This road is closed to your people, we’ve taken our payment,” the man whispers as he steps between him and his team, his movements determined and proud like a monster flaunting it’s kill. Behind him two boys - mere children - walk over and sling their guns onto their backs before grabbing at Tivik’s lifeless hands to start dragging him off the road. 

He’d done this. Cassian had killed Tivik by not answering the man earlier when they were in the safety of the car. His lack of response had garnered suspicion and it had been  _ his fault _ for getting to this point. If he’d just spoken up, if he hadn’t stayed silent Tivik would still be alive. The blood was on his hands - literally. The blood was on  _ his hands _ .

He wants to stop the boys, to take Tivik with them back to the station - to his family, his son - but he can’t risk anyone else on his team. Not Bodhi with the sick mother, or Shara with the fiance at home, promises of a wedding when she returns. Especially not Jyn, even though he couldn’t place  _ why _ he felt like that loss would wound him the most. He couldn’t put them in any more danger by insisting on taking the man's body. 

Because it was a body now, that much was clear from the trail of blood left behind. 

“Bodhi, Shara, Jyn, up - now. Grab your papers. Up,” Cassian pauses when Jyn doesn’t move, his hands landing heavily on her shoulders and causing her to lash out reactively. Her nails nearly make contact with his face before he grabs at her wrists, holding her steady. “Get up, get in the car,” he orders, his gaze focused on her eyes. Those eyes that were still staring at the scene before her, like they were framing the moment in her memory. He squeezes her shoulders and then moves her forcibly towards the vehicle as Bodhi scrambles to grab the documents fluttering in the breeze, shakingly getting to his feet before pulling Shara up beside him and into the false safety of the car. When the doors are finally closed, Cassian turns purposely on his heel, crawls into the driver’s seat and starts the car. None of them speak.

He drives back to the station without once looking back, Tivik’s blood drying and cracking along the skin of his knuckles. 


	2. ONE DAY POST

_ Jyn _

He won’t look at her and maybe she doesn’t want him to. Maybe she wants him to fuck off back to wherever he came from with his kind eyes and his understanding touch. She hates him. She misses him. Where did he go after they piled out of that vehicle? When they reached the gates of the station and Shara burst from the backseat and vomited across the dirt? 

_ “Ops Centre, now,” Cassian growls, pointing towards the makeshift structure with a steady hand that she envies. Jyn looks at him from the front passenger seat, frozen as Shara and Bodhi walk silently away from her. “Jyn, you need to get out of the car now.” She shakes her head and curls further into herself, her head pressing against the dashboard.  _

_ The door opens on her right and she wants to scream, the sound scraping in her chest. It hurts to breathe and she doesn’t know how to process what’s happened - what she’s seen and felt. The blood and the heat of a gun on her neck.  _

_ “Jyn,” Cassian murmurs, so close and yet so softly that it sounds like an echo on the wind. “Come on, Jyn.”  _

_ His hand grazes her elbow and all of a sudden she’s fighting against the invisible memory, the strong hands that had forced her into the hole when she was just a kid. She won’t go back, she can’t.  _

_ “Shh, Jyn - no - shh,” his words whisper across her skin and she breaks under the pressure, her whole being going limp as the silent sob escapes her chest. Why was he so nice? Why did he treat her like she was a treasure that had to be held with the greatest of care? She didn’t know how to take softness when all of her years had trained her for something sharp.  _

_ Jyn had been a warrior since she was born, her life in foster care having taught her how to survive against all odds.  _

_ Her parents had been stolen from her when she was just a kid - tiny and hidden in a closet as the bad men came in and shot her mother and took her father against his will. She’d never understood why until she’d grown up and learned about them, about their sacrifices for something better for her. _

_ She’d been too small to understand when Mr Gerrera had come to take her to his house. Too small to understand that he’d been training her to survive, to fight, every day of her life until he died too, a car crash that had thrust her back into the vicious system at the age of sixteen.  _

_ When she finally escaped her last group home by aging out of the system, she somehow found her footing in the world. Her time with Gerrera and fighting through the homes after had given her a lifetime’s worth of lessons all burned into her small frame. Joining this team on her first mission had been the only time where she’d felt like maybe her years of battle were finally going to pay off, like she had a family she could count on. She persevered even when things fell apart and it served her well in this place where things never worked like they were supposed to.  _

_ But this, Tivik, was almost too much. She hadn’t prepared for this scenario, not really. Sure, she’d known it was going to be hard and that there were risks to the mission but this - she didn’t think it could go like this. They hadn't told her at her briefing that she would watch a man die. That every time she closed her eyes she would see her friend Tivik - see her mother again - taking their last breath. She could still see Tivik collapse, the friendly man bleeding into the dirt as Cassian tried helplessly to stem the bleeding.  _

_ “You’ve got to get out of the car, Jyn,” Cassian repeats for the nth time, his hand heavy on the back of her neck as his thumb draws tiny circles over her spine. For the briefest of seconds she wonders if he even knows he’s doing it. She wonders if this is what it would feel like if she’d invited him into her bed after the other night. The same night where he’d held her hand across the pock-marked table and kissed her in between hallways until she’d nearly caught on fire with want.  _

_ “Cassian!” Doc Phillips calls from somewhere outside the vehicle. Her voice sounds strained and Jyn closes her eyes tight as Cassian’s hand stills against her skin.  _

_ “I’ll be there in a minute,” Cassian calls back and she exhales the breath she’d been holding when his thumb returns its patterned caress. “Jyn, we’ve got to report in. We’ve got to go see Phillips and get checked out, okay? I need you to come with me.”  _

_ She sucks in a breath and turns to look at him, jumping when she realizes just how close he is. His chest is pressed to her arm, his face mere inches from hers as his head dips and his eyes search for her own. She feels his gaze lock and it makes her heart ache, the pain reflecting back at her making the loss hurt ten times more.  _

_ “They killed him,” she whispers because it’s the only thing she can say.  _

_ “Yes. But they didn’t kill you. So come with me, okay? I need you to come with me.”  _

_ She remembers his stained hands on her chin, his thumbs wiping away what must have been tears, his fingers brushing back a lock of hair from her eyes. His touch was almost heavy, like maybe he’d been leaning into it almost as much as she was, before he pulls back quickly as though burned.  _

_ By the time she's out of the vehicle he's already five feet away, his hands shoved in his pockets as though he couldn’t bear to touch her anymore.  _

He wouldn’t look at her now. His eyes are on the floor and his boot is tapping and it's driving her fucking insane. Why won’t he look at her? Is he even looking at anyone? After their incident debriefing he’d disappeared into his office as the team had dispersed to their accommodations without so much as a look backwards. Had he even come out before this morning? The dark circles under his eyes said no. 

“The replacement team will be here in the morning. We’ve been asked to shelter in place until they arrive. Does anyone have anything they need to communicate back to HQ prior to our departure tomorrow?” Phillips, the site doctor and deputy of the team, asks aloud. Bodhi raises his hand and then motions to where Shara is sitting, her face tight and her eyes red. “Got it. We’ll facilitate that after the meeting. You’re all dismissed.” 

Jyn escapes from the Ops Centre as quickly as she can, her feet practically running as she heads to her room and the safety of her space. She needed to get out of here, out of this place where the air was so thick it felt like being strangled just to breathe. She needed to get somewhere where she couldn’t see him, where she didn’t have to confront the fact that he wouldn’t even  _ look  _ at her.

What had she even done? Hadn’t they become friends? Why wouldn’t he even look at her, after everything? 

She hated this obsessive train of thought but couldn’t find her way out of it - there was no breaking the pattern her brain was setting as it tried to avoid thinking of anything else. Thinking of Tivik -  _ no. _

“Jyn?” Her heart skitters to a stop as she stands over her broken chair. The one she’d put a foot through after their debrief yesterday. “Can I come in?” 

“I don’t - “ she stops, presses her fingers to her eyes and shakes her head. Outside she can hear Cassian shift on his feet, waiting for her to finish whatever she’d started to say. Now she  _ had _ to come up with something. “I don’t know.” 

“Oh.” 

There’s a silence between them and Jyn panics, picking up her sheets and throwing them on the chair as though they’ll hide the broken item. As though her desk didn’t look empty without the accompanying seat. 

“Do you want me to talk from out here? Or do you just want me to leave?” Cassian attempts. She can’t ignore the way his voice wavers, like he wasn’t sure he would do either. 

“No.” 

“To which question?” He counters and she sighs, pushing open the door and looking up at him in the sinking light of evening. 

“To both,” she says, her eyes averted as he finally dares to try to look at her. 

Stepping back, Jyn tries not to freeze up as he brushes past her and into the small space. He’s too tall for it, his normally combed hair fitfully sticking up at the back and belying his normal tightly controlled appearance. If she weren’t hovering on the edge of sanity she’d probably laugh, but her body can’t rouse the effort. 

“How are you doing today?” He asks carefully, like he was worried he was about to up-end the tea cart with his question. 

“Fucking peachy, why do you ask?” He refuses to react and simply stares at the floor, his arms resting across his chest. Jyn shifts in his presence, glancing at her destroyed chair and the mess of fabric covering it. 

“I don’t know why I doubt your answer,” he replies eventually - sarcastically - and Jyn rolls her eyes, finally looking up in his direction. 

“Why are you here? Are you checking on everyone?” Her words are more caustic than she intends and his expression hardens, his eyes flickering behind the mask he wears. She hates that mask - she’s tried to pull it loose every day since she got here. 

“Phillips is checking in on them. I wanted to check on you. Is that alright? Would you prefer I get her?” His voice is low, almost soothing, and if she weren’t so angry she would give in to it in a second. But she’s still angry and he’s patronizing her and - 

“Why won’t you look at me?” Jyn breaks and she feels his eyes snap up to hers, his gaze focusing on her for the first time since the incident. “You’ve barely looked at me since you pulled me out of the car and I don’t know why it’s driving me this crazy but it  _ is _ .” 

“It’s trauma, Jyn. Everything you’re feeling - all the whiplash that must be running through you right now - it’s normal. Everyone processes these things differently and it’s - “ 

“You’re not answering my question,” she bites back, interrupting his standard crisis response speel as she steps towards him until there’s no way he can look elsewhere. “I  _ know _ what trauma is and that’s not - why are you avoiding me?” 

“Jyn,” he pauses and she’s so close she can feel his breath on her face. 

“We’re friends, aren’t we? Don’t friends talk to one another?” 

“We are. They do.” She watches as his mask flickers, his brow furrowing before evening out. 

“Then why are you ignoring me? When I actually need someone to help me make this make sense?” Her fingers curl into fists at her sides and when she speaks her voice catches, the pitch shifting as she tries to breathe through her words. There was an ache in her that wouldn’t abate, a twisting pain that had her rung out and weak and she hated it.

“Because I - because his blood was on your face. Yesterday. When we got back. It must have been a spatter or some from when I was talking to you in the car but it was on your face and it felt like I’d put it there - I’d stained you with it. And when I look at you it’s what I see even though it’s not there anymore, okay? That’s why I’ve - I don’t know. Why I’ve been distant. I know it’s pathetic but I can’t get it out of my head. It's not fair and I'm not asking for you not to be mad but I need you to know it's not because of you. It's not you, Jyn.”

She steps back at that, her gaze snapping to the floor and hiding herself from him. If that’s what he saw - was it still there? She’d showered twice. She’d rubbed her face almost raw. Did she still have Tivik’s blood on her? Did she - 

“Jyn, no,” he breaks through her spinning thoughts and grabs her hands from where they’ve started rubbing fitfully at her skin. “Don’t - it’s not there anymore. It’s gone - it’s  _ gone _ .” His arms wrap around her shoulders and he pulls her against his chest, her body collapsing into his and the warmth he offers as the thoughts cause shivers to run up her already warmed skin. 

When her breathing finally steadies and she’s able to find her feet again she tries to pull back, to give him space, but he only holds tighter to her frame, his own breathing harsh against her neck. He was hurting too beneath his mask, she could feel it radiating from him and it only made her tighten her hold until they were both clinging to one another in the small space of her room. 

She'd dreamt of this closeness, this touch, but not like _ this.  _ Never like this.

Minutes pass before Cassian finally loosens his hold and runs his hands up to cup the back of her head, his fingers weaving into the hair at her nape. When he sighs, his body relaxing against her for the first time, she mirrors his clutching hands and nuzzles into his shoulder. The once desperate hold has turned to a comforting embrace, their bodies pressed together and their breaths even and slow. 

“We go back tomorrow,” he says lowly, the scrape of his beard against the side of her face causing her hands to tense for a moment. 

“I know,” she answers and lets it sit there, the quiet finally less painful around them. 

“Will I…” He pauses and she can feel him tense, his fingers slipping to her shoulders as he slowly moves away to catch her eyes with his. “Will I see you again?” 

She doesn’t know if he means ever, or back in the field, or back in the city she knows they both share. There’s too much unspoken between them, too many bridges started but unfinished, outcroppings connecting them only half assembled. Could she ever go back to a place like this? Where she might get killed if she made a mis-step? The thought makes her throat close up and she tries to look away again, to hide the tears burning at the back of her eyes, but his thumbs slide along her jaw and keep her turned up to face him.

“I need to figure out what I’m going to do when this is over,” she says noncommittally, her voice wavering. “I don’t know if I could do this again.” He nods as though he understands but she sees the hesitation in his eyes, the uncertainty that curls inside of him. Did she mean the mission? Them? She wasn’t even sure herself. 

“That’s okay,” he replies after a moment, his hands slowly dropping back to his sides. She misses the contact almost immediately, her skin cold without his touch, but she knows better than to ask for him to return it when she feels so unsteady herself. “I should let you pack, transpo has us leaving as soon as the next cohort arrives and it’ll be a busy handover morning.” 

He doesn’t say goodbye and she doesn’t either as he nods one final time and slips out the door and back into the evening light. When morning comes she shoves the remnants of her things into her bag and slings it over her shoulder, joining the team as the next group arrives. Handovers are quick, notes are exchanged, and eventually they’re all piled into the vehicle with their gear stuffed around their feet. 

Jyn tries not to lose it as Shara whimpers in front of her, Bodhi’s hand on her teammate’s arm making Jyn jealous as she tries to get comfortable in the backseat. From her place in the car she watches as Cassian finishes his conversation with the new team leader, his eyes flickering to hers briefly before he shakes the woman's hand and turns towards them. She doesn’t expect him to slide between the seats until he’s next to her, his face forward as the driver asks if they’re ready to depart. 

“Yes, Ti - Yes, we are,” Cassian chokes out. Only Jyn can see his mask waver, the way he chews at the inside of his cheek as he almost mentions the man lost. Without asking, Jyn reaches across the seat and grabs Cassian’s hand from his lap, tugging it into her tight grip as they pull out of the station compound. 

They don’t let go until they’re back stateside and Jyn’s cab sits waiting at the curb, the farewell heavy on her lips. 

“Everything will turn out alright,” he says when she can’t manage to get the words out of her mouth. His hand lifts hers to his lips and he presses a soft kiss to her knuckles before he steps back and lets her go, his smile sad. She wishes she could say something, anything, but her mouth is dry and it hurts and she doesn’t want to make this harder than it already is. 

So Jyn does what she does best - she nods, turns on her heel and climbs in the back of the cab not once looking back at the man she’s running away from. 


	3. TWO MONTHS POST

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of explicit content below. A touch of suicidal ideation too. Hopefully y'all are still out there, enjoying, reading. The logged out hit count doesn't tell me if anyone is so if you're reading along, please let me know if you're out there with a kudos or a comment ;)

_ Cassian _

Another alert pings his phone, buzzing the device off the table and onto the solid wood floor. He watches it from the couch across the room where he sits heavily, elbows on his knees, chest bare, the TV flickering before him and looping stories of the latest disaster that had caught the world's attention. 

They probably wanted him to go out with the next team, help set things up so they could be done right from the start. He wanted to go, to help, but he couldn't make himself move. Couldn't rally the strength to answer the calls or the alerts or do anything except stare blindly at the world melting before him.

He'd been here for days but he’d barely left the room. Had he eaten? Had he done anything but stare listlessly at the walls, the TV flickering and the sounds of the ocean outside keeping him away from the doors and windows? 

Kay had told him escaping to the coast had a high probability of easing his worries - that the open space would give him room to breathe - but all he'd found since coming out to this ramshackle cottage was that the ocean was loud and the lack of people, of infrastructure, was almost as suffocating as the press of it in the city. Cassian was starting to think this discomfort would never wane. Maybe that was his punishment for not speaking up on that road. For letting his failure catch up with him.

The TV switches its coverage to the local news and his attention is drawn to a festival further down the beach, the lights warm and the bodies not mashed together like sardines from the scenes before. He could go there, try to escape himself for a little while. It would be good to leave and be outside for a few hours, right? 

Getting to his feet, he turns to his bag and pulls out a clean shirt, tugging it over his too thin frame before running a hand through his hair. He doesn’t look at himself in the mirror -  _ can’t _ \- before he pockets his keys, phone and wallet. 

It isn’t a far walk, just barely further than the station to the nearest camp, but it still winds him as he marks a gruelling pace. He doesn’t know why he’s rushing but he is, desperate to be in a place where everything feels different and he’s able to escape this haunting feeling filling half of his chest. The lights that greet him shine brightly in the setting sun, cast along from post to post and strung up over a grand entryway. A ferris wheel sits on the edge of the lot and vendors line the tight walkways, calling out to him with offers to  _ ‘step right up’ _ and  _ ‘prove it’s your lucky day’ _ . It isn’t, but they don’t know that. 

There's a halting feeling that he's been here before - the markets in the jungle, teeming with life and spice and bodies all pressed together. It's not as humid and the sounds aren't the same but the way the crowd moves  _ is _ and it registers as a pause in his step.

He stalks through the aisles, marching up and down them like he was looking for someone. Sometimes his shoulder will catch a bystander and they’ll yelp, tossing out curse words as he flicks his hand at them. They won’t remember him - nobody does - so what’s the harm? 

“You look like you could use a drink,” a man says to his right as he stands frozen, his stride faltering as he finds himself on the edge of the festival with the ocean spanning out before him. His mouth is dry, the waves seemingly crashing into him and making his heart scatter its beat in his chest. “Beer tent is over on the south side, just so you know,” the man adds before slinking away. 

Cassian finds himself on a bar stool moments later, a warm beer in hand as he tries to focus on anything but the sound of the ocean in his periphery. His gaze moves from person to person, observing the way they cling to one another, how happy couples link hands and smile like they’re filled with secrets and adoration. He tries not to look at their faces but finds himself catching one in the crowd, her dark bangs hanging in her green eyes and the sharp planes of her face turned upward in an uncertain smile. It’s only a second that he stares at her, observing, before she happens to look up and lock eyes with him. Shame heats his cheeks and he orders another beer, his gaze focused on the bar he leans on and the names carved into the cheap wood. 

It wasn’t Jyn, no matter how much he wanted it to be. 

He hadn’t heard from her since she got in that cab, the silence between them almost strangling the life from him like the nightmares managed to do every night. How he had let it get this bad he didn’t know - all he  _ did _ know was that some part of him was tied up in her and the mistakes that had happened in Scarif and he was sinking under the weight of them all. 

The number of drinks he consumes escapes him. He knows it’s more than three - he remembered the judging way the bartender had looked at him - but he’d lost count after that. Maybe it was only his third. Maybe it was his fifth. It didn’t matter because he was cut off the moment his body slipped from the edge of the stool, his hands reaching out to slow the impact but failing. 

Something cracks, reverberates up his arm and into his chest. 

He gets to his feet and waves off the concern from passers by, keeping his mouth shut even though all he wants is to howl in pain. Not the pain in his arm - not really - but the  _ other  _ pain. The one that consumed him every waking moment which lately was  _ every fucking moment _ . 

Staggering through the festival alleys once again, Cassian heads towards the fence line that leads to the beach and clamours gracelessly over the orange plastic. His foot catches in something and he only just escapes another faceplant, his vision blurry as a sharp sting echoes through his bones. 

To his right a pier juts out into the surf, the water lapping at the posts and practically beckoning to him. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe. He should head left - it’s where his cottage is, where he can recover without making a fool of himself and maybe wrap whatever limb is riddling shooting pains throughout his body. 

But instead he moves right and stumbles his way up the wooden planks, one foot in front of the other again and again until the ground is flat once more. 

Dragging his hand along the railing, Cassian moves towards the horizon in measured steps. The ocean calls to him in soft tones that soothe his aches. Where before it had mocked him - slammed into him like a fist - now it lay before his feet like a quiet salvation. The end of the pier is empty and he feels the relief of this loneliness like a balm over a burn. There’s no one to scream out here. No child to drag a lifeless body further into the dirt. 

Leaning himself against a lamp post takes a balance he hadn’t thought he possessed, his ribs shifting him back and forth with every breath. Or was it the ocean moving the pier? Crashing into the aging wood and calling out to him, like a hand outstretched? 

In the distance he hears voices and he wishes they would stop -  _ leave him be _ \- but not even here could he escape what he’s done. 

_ We’ve taken our payment _ . 

“ _ Dios _ [ _ , ayúdame _ ](https://context.reverso.net/translation/spanish-english/Se%C3%B1or%2C+ay%C3%BAdame) _ , _ ” he whispers and rubs at his face. His good hand jams into his pocket and he pulls out his phone and dials Jyn’s number, desperate to hear a friendly voice as he stares out into the abyss. The move unbalances him though and he stumbles - one step, then two - before his hip hits the railing. He tries to grapple his hands against the wood, dropping his phone onto the planks and the ocean below, but the railing is slick with damp lacquer and age and one of his hands only mimics movement before flopping back to his side. 

He thinks, for one silent moment, that maybe the Lord heard him and was releasing him from his pain. 

But then his back strikes the water and the air - what little he had in him - whooshes from his chest and leaves him gasping liquid into his lungs. It wasn’t  _ los Dios _ that heard him. It was  _ el diablo _ coming to take what was due for his crimes against Tivik and Jyn. 

Around him the ocean shifts and knocks him against one of the pillars of the pier, his chest crashing into the wood and a soundless shout escaping from him. 

He thinks if this is the way he’s going to die then maybe he deserves it. That he’d been right all along to hate himself for what he’d done and this was the only fitting way to punish him. Drown him after the water beats him into submission like it’d been doing since he arrived in this town. 

Cassian isn’t sure how he gets to shore. It’s foggy at best, the sound of water sloshing in his ears as someone shouts overhead and presses against his chest. Air -  _ sweet oxygen _ \- is forced between his lips and he chokes on it like he hadn’t been starving for it for the last four months. He’s rolled onto his side and the pain in his arm, his ribs, shocks through him as his nerves come alive with the cold water beating back the numbing effect of the alcohol. 

Maybe he shouts with the movement. Maybe whoever is kneeling over him notices the tears cutting through the water on his cheeks because they instantly shift him to the other side and run their hands over his limbs. They’re checking for further injuries and they find them - noting them down to a bystander who repeats them into the air. 

“Hey, you’ll be alright,” God says, looking at him with her dark eyes hidden behind damp dark bangs. “Just a bit of late night fishing, eh?” 

“Ambulance will be here in five minutes,” a man says overhead, voice husky with age. 

“Give me your sweater,” the woman demands and Cassian nearly sobs with the warmth that settles over him. “Five minutes, okay?” She whispers and he thinks he feels her hand on the back of his neck, the touch likely meant to keep him on his side but still comforting as her thumb rubs small circles under his ear. 

He’s not sure if he’s fully conscious by the time the paramedics arrive, rolling him onto a backboard and clipping a neck brace in place. The sand from the beach chafes his skin as they carry him further away from the water and towards the flashing lights. Sirens thankfully stay silent as the paramedic works on him, securing his braced arm and cutting through his clean shirt to get a visual on his chest. His eyes close as the man’s hands press lightly across his chest until he gasps, the blossom of pain working through him as he reaches his side. 

“Almost at the hospital, sir,” he says evenly and Cassian wishes they weren’t. 

If they weren’t almost there maybe he wouldn’t make it and he could finally be free.

* * *

He’s released from the hospital against doctors orders in the morning with two bruised ribs and a fractured wrist in a cast. The story had been that he’d slipped and fallen, that he hadn’t caught his footing because of the alcohol in his veins. They’d seen it happen to drunks before - a frequent occurrence they’d rather not address - and he’d just been lucky that bystanders had been there to drag him out of the water. 

He hadn’t bothered to tell the doctors about how he hadn’t exactly wanted to survive because that wouldn’t do - if he’d said something like that then surely he wouldn’t be released without someone to monitor him, or worse, not released at all. 

When he returns to the city later that day, Kay is waiting at his apartment, his expression as distressed as he’s ever seen it - which is saying something since the man is  _ never _ distressed.

“The hospital contacted me and alerted me to your early discharge. From the way you hold yourself it is clear that that was a poor decision on your part but I will not fault you for it - tell me what you need to assist you,” he demands and Cassian simply looks at him, words frozen in his throat. 

_ Relief _ . 

His body screams it, silently, but there’s none of it in sight. So instead he leans against the door to his balcony and lets his breath fog the glass. Cassian tells himself he needs to do better. Be better. 

“Some groceries for a few days would be good,” he mumbles to the man, knowing that if he didn’t give his friend something useful to do he would pester him with endless questions until his brain split in two. 

“Consider it done. Don’t jump until I get back, okay?” Kay jokes and Cassian laughs because the man has no idea how close he is to doing just that. 

The dark chain of his thoughts makes him recoil internally. When the door closes behind him, the soft click alerting him to his friend’s exit, Cassian pushes himself away from the glass and retreats to his room to crawl into his bed, far enough from the glass to reduce the sickening temptation of the fall. 

Pity finds him there and he tries to push through it, his chest aching from the bruised ribs or the exhaustion he isn’t quite sure. All he is sure of is that he needs to get over this hump. He needs to rejoin the world of the living. 

When the knock sounds at his door he ignores it, curling into himself and being assured that if it was Kay then he would find his way back into the apartment. It’s almost an hour later when he hears a key in the lock, the metal clicking open and two voices echoing in the hallway.

“I do not think that - “ 

“Get out of the way already,” Jyn’s angry voice sounds around Kay’s protests, the grocery bags crinkling as the man grumbles in return. 

“He does not need - “ 

“Cassian!” She calls and her voice is hardened, worried, and it causes Cassian to sit up quickly in bed and gasp with the pain of the movement. She finds him holding tightly to his chest, his torso marred and bare as she bursts into his room. “You’re alive,” she breathes, almost angry. 

“You must leave now that you’ve confirmed - “ Kay attempts, grabbing her shoulder. Jyn swivels on her heel and throws an elbow into his stomach, pushing him away from her as she tries to return to the doorframe. 

“What’re you doing here?” Cassian manages as she brushes the hair from her face. She looks a wreck, her skin pale and her clothes rumpled. She looks as bad as he does but at least she’s standing, something he couldn't force himself to do right now. 

“I thought you died!” She hisses, stalking towards him as Kay swears under his breath. “Don’t touch me again, automaton!” 

“You can’t just barge into someone’s - “ 

“Kay, give us a minute please,” Cassian asks over the man’s sputtering words, his shock evident as he looks towards him. There’s a silent moment where the two friends stare at each other, daring the other to make this into a bigger issue. Kay gives in first and grumbles something inaudible, walking pointedly out of the room and towards the kitchen. “Why did you think I’d died?” He starts when the sound of cupboards clapping angrily open and closed reaches them. 

“Because I got a call from your number but it was just a shout before the line went dead. And now look at you - you’re a disaster.” Her voice is harsh but her eyes give away the worry that had spilled out of her, thick and heavy on the air. 

“I’m sorry - I had an accident and didn’t remember that I’d called,” he attempts. Jyn crosses her arms and rubs a hand across her face for a moment. 

“I had to drag Bodhi into HQ to get onto their systems and find out where you live because you weren’t answering your phone. It was a whole thing that - whatever. It's fine. It's okay. You’re not dead.” 

“I’m not,” he confirms and she closes her eyes, her face relaxing slightly before she once again looks at him with frustration. 

“What happened, Cassian? Why do you look like someone kicked the shit out of you?” He shrugs and she scoffs, inching closer until she’s kneeling before him, her hand resting on where he’s perched his own on his knee. “You know I can see through your bullshit, right? I learned all your nervous ticks on those nights after your second beer.” 

He scoffs and looks away. “I fell.” 

“Try again,” she presses to his lack of response and he groans, lifting his hand from hers and rubbing his face. He wanted some space. He wanted to be left  _ alone _ . But the same part of him that had pushed him towards the pier that night was the same whispering voice in the back of his head telling him these things. It was a dark hum in his gut, a shadow tinting his sight. In front of him was the one person he’d called to try to help him when that voice became too loud and she barely even  _ knew _ him but still, the other part of him was telling him to talk to her. To get some help for once in his godforsaken life. 

“I was drinking and fell off a pier. I was having a rough night - “

“Not just a night!” Kay shouts from the kitchen and Jyn growls, getting to her feet and stomping towards the door to slam it and give them some semblance of privacy. Cassian watches with wide eyes as she turns back around to face him, her expression neutral. 

“It’s happening to you too, isn’t it?” She asks after a moment, her own stoicism flickering before disappearing like a candle flame in a strong breeze. 

“I haven’t seen you in months but even I can see that you’re not sleeping and for every night you don’t sleep you’re skipping meals too,” she adds and motions to the way his ribs cast shadows on his skin. “It’s the nightmares. From Scarif. Isn’t it?” 

“I don’t know what - “

“Let’s do us both a favour and not pretend like we’re doing better than we are,” she counters as she settles down next to him. He can’t look at her, not when he’s this fractured. The silence stretches out, tinting the air, before Jyn sighs and grips her own knees in her hands. “It’s happening to me too. But I haven’t fallen off any piers so I guess it’s harder to notice.” 

“What do you mean?” He attempts, chancing a glance at her profile. 

“I mean that the mission fucked me up, Cassian. I didn’t go out there to watch someone die. I went to  _ help _ people and I ended up getting someone killed - “ 

“You didn’t kill him,” he interjects and it’s  _ fucking rich _ coming from him but what else can he say? Jyn didn’t get the man killed, how could she? It was her first mission and she barely said anything and if it was  _ anyone _ who should get the blame - 

“I didn’t save him though and maybe that’s worse,” she says, the pain in her words cutting through his mess of jumbled thoughts. 

“What could you have done that wouldn’t have gotten you killed too?” He prods carefully, knowing his own answer as clear as day. 

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think that maybe it would have been better if I had - “ 

“Don’t. Jyn, don’t say it,” he stops her and the hurt twists in his gut like a knife. His gaze flickers from her white knuckles to the tight lines at the corner of her eye, the tears that threaten and make her body tense next to his. “It wouldn’t be better. Whatever it is - it wouldn’t have been better if it meant you getting hurt. Or not being here.” 

“How can you say that when you look worse than I do?” She half laughs, half sputters, turning to face him. Her eyes are red but the tears he’d expected to fall are gone, the flash of green in her irises challenging him. “We’re both a mess, aren’t we? That mission really fucked us both up and it’s why you haven’t called, right?” 

Cassian swallows at that. He hadn’t called her because he hadn’t wanted to drag her down, to keep her from the growth that he was sure she would have once she got back home. But apparently whether he’d called or not hadn’t changed a thing - she was still trapped back in Scarif, just like him. 

“I didn’t think hearing from me would be a good thing,” he admits weakly, lifting his shoulders in quiet resolve. 

“Did you think that maybe I  _ wanted _ to hear from you? That it could have been easier for us both if we could talk about it with each other?” She stops her questioning and reaches her hand to his cheek, her thumb slow as it grazes his chin. “I… Cassian, I’ve missed you. On top of the rest of it.” 

“Why didn’t you call  _ me _ then?” He asks as he tries to stop himself from leaning into her touch. He wanted to, badly, but his hesitation was winning out. 

“I thought you would have reached out if - if you wanted to talk to me. And then when I realized you wouldn’t do it, it was too late to just try to call you. I figured maybe you’d gone back out to the field, or you’d moved on or something,” she adds and drops her hand. He misses it instantly and his body jerks with the loss, leaning into her space just a little bit more as he tries to reclaim the touch. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. I wanted - I mean, I missed you too,” he pauses and finds her holding her breath, his own chest aching with the need to pull her close. He settles for resting his forehead against hers, their fingers linking as he closes his eyes. 

“What do we do now that we know we were both being idiots?” She asks after a minute, her voice tight. 

“Maybe we can give this a try. This talking thing and see if it helps. Maybe we could - I don’t know. Go for coffee? I’m terrible at this though, let's be clear about that right now.” 

“Coffee would be good. Is Friday too soon? Now that I know you’re not dying I know the time pressure is off but  _ still _ .” 

“Friday then. I promise not to die before then,” he jokes and laughs and the bitter taste in his mouth returns as he catches his own indifference to surviving. He had to pull himself together. He had to try to get his life back on track. If not for himself then for the people around him. 

“Good. I’d be very angry if you did,” she answers softly, her body shifting until her lips graze across his. It’s a feather-brush, a kiss that’s barely there, but he’s starving for touch and she’s offering it so willingly that he leans forward and deepens it without a moment’s hesitation. 

In the blink of an eye he’s back in their accommodations building in Scarif and he’s pressing her into the stucco wall, his tongue sliding across the seam of her lips as the humid warmth of the night curls around them. When he pulls back the vision snaps and he’s in his room at home, her green eyes bright as they catch his in surprise. 

“I should go,” she whispers, careful to withdraw her hand from where it’d been only moments ago gripping his belt loop. 

“Friday?” He asks, pleads, as she gets back to her feet. 

“Friday. I’ll text you a place. Don’t die before then, okay?” He nods and she opens his bedroom door, turning to spit something at Kay before she leaves the apartment and his friend in her wake. 

“Do you owe that girl money?” Kay asks as the door slams, his arms crossed over his chest. 

“No,” Cassian replies and eases himself to his feet, determined to try to get better as he moves to join his friend in the other room. 

By the end of the week, Cassian has forced himself to exercise for the first time in months, has managed to cook food that he doesn’t just stare at and has even gone out into the sunlight to sit and try to feel its warmth through the cold settled in his gut. The choices take the edge off of his ache and for the briefest of moments he thinks maybe he’s  _ getting better _ . Maybe he can force himself to be better with sheer willpower.

But probably not. 

* * *

Coffee quickly dissolves into drinks and before he even realizes what’s happening she’s dragging him down a hallway, her fingers tight around his. 

“Here,” she says lowly, tugging him towards the door at the end of the hallway. Her fingers dig for a set of keys in her bag and he eases himself up against her back, his lips grazing the side of her neck as she fumbles. “I can’t focus when you - ah - do that,” she sighs as he nips her earlobe and draws back, reading between the lines and giving her a minute. “I didn’t mean I wanted you to stop,” she whispers, desperate to feel his hands on her again. He finds purchase once more in the back of her shirt and curls himself closer into her warmth. 

“I can wait,” he lies, his fingers finding her hips as she finally releases the lock on her apartment door. They stumble through, all hands and mouths and breaths with hints of alcohol colliding together. 

She leads them down a dark hallway and he follows with his fingers linked with hers, his breath hot against her neck. He needed it - needed her - and he was in no state to question if it was the right thing to do, going home with her like this. 

They’d been in such a good place all afternoon, laughing and joking and so outside of who he’d become since coming back from the mission, not even the pinch of his injured ribs could sour this feeling. Was she seeing through his facade of health? Could she tell that his laughter was just a bit too close to the razor’s edge? He hoped not. If she could see the depth of the shadow that haunted him surely she wouldn’t get closer, wouldn’t let her hands linger on his thigh or press her lips to his neck, right? 

“Come back,” she whispers as her lips trace along his collar. His hand releases its painful grip on her hip, the one not clumsy with his cast, and he forces his thoughts - murky at best - to refocus on the woman in front of him. The beautiful, foul-mouthed green-eyed woman that he hadn’t been able to ignore since the moment she’d sat down across from him. 

“Sorry,” he answers as she sighs and urges his head forward so she can reach his mouth better. Her teeth sink into his lip and the pain of it makes him feel alive, his heart racing as he hardens and jerks her closer. She growls in return and pushes him back by the shoulders until his calves hit the edge of the bed and he’s tumbling backward with a stuttered laugh. 

“What do you want, Cassian?” She asks as her nails scrape along the trail of hair that leads from his chest down to his belt. “Are you clean? Do I need to worry if I take you between my lips?” 

“I’m clean,” he replies before his brain stops working. This was all going so quickly - like fire in a room full of propane - and he didn’t want it to stop. 

“Good. I am too,” she adds and flicks her fingers to release the button on his pants. She eases the fabric away and climbs up to straddle his thighs. His hands press against the smooth flesh of her ribs, callouses grazing across the skin under her shirt as she grins down at him. “Can I touch you?” She asks, her eyes watching as he shifts under her stare. 

“If you want,” escapes his mouth and he feels pathetic underneath her, his body giving in without any fight. 

“I do. I want you,” she replies and runs her hands up his torso, her fingers releasing the buttons until his chest is bare under the ghost of her palms. 

She doesn’t lean on his bruises and he’s thankful, her mind conscious enough to remember his injuries even through all of this haze. He knows his ribs are too prominent, that his muscles look toned only for the lack of flesh that a man should have, but she doesn’t seem to mind as she leans forward and trails her lips along the center of him. Her hands pull at his pants and he lifts his hips to help her draw them off, discarding them to the side of the bed. Reaching next for the fastenings of her jeans, Cassian jolts up and wraps his hands around hers, stilling her movement.

“I want to do that,” he requests softly, their faces close as he looks into her eyes and she nods. His fingers release the button and graze her skin as he draws the zipper down, lifting to slide the fabric of her shirt up her chest. When he reaches her shoulders she takes the cue and lifts her arms overhead, obediently letting him pull the garment from her body until it joins his pants on the floor. 

He stares at her for a moment as his heart slams viciously in his chest. Her pale skin is marred with scars, the flesh too tight along her frame and he can see the echoes of her own struggle, one fought with sharp unforgiving things. Where he’d assumed she’d be more soft, her hips rounded instead of jutting, she was hard lines mixed with strength and beauty threaded between the stories told in her skin. 

“Are you going to stare all night?” She asks breathlessly, the confidence wavering in her voice as she gets up and wiggles her jeans down her legs. She kicks them off to the side and then returns to his lap, her expression tight. When she’s settled, Cassian flicks his eyes up to hers and sees the vulnerability she’d hidden all day underneath a crude sense of humour, the hesitation that builds with every second he stays silent.

“You’re beautiful,” he admits because it’s true. She rolls her eyes and looks over his shoulder, unbelieving, refusing. 

“You’re already half-naked in a bed, you don’t need to lie,” she counters with a false brightness. He opens his mouth to tell her he wasn’t lying, that she was gold stardust in his grasp, but she doesn’t let him. Her mouth finds his and her tongue presses between his teeth, her hand sliding against his length to thoroughly distract him. 

She moves herself closer to his frame until their chests are mere inches apart, her hand having pulled his length loose. He lets himself get lost in her touch as his own hands scrape against her skin, unclasping her bra and discarding it to the side before he lifts his palm to cup her breast. She moans against him and he can feel her heat press into his lap as she rolls her hips in return. 

She takes and he gives, the push and pull between them making his body tense as she shifts and sinks down to pull his underwear from his frame before wrapping her lips around his cock. He could fall apart like this - his release in her throat and his hands in her hair - but he fights to keep himself together a bit longer if only because he needed to know the sounds she makes with his body between her thighs. 

Her mouth is heaven on earth though and he fights to stop from thrusting into her warmth, his body screaming from lack of oxygen as she tugs playfully at him and nearly pushes him over the edge. He can feel himself getting close, the heat pooling at the base of his spine as he groans and slides his hand to her chin, guiding her lips up until she flicks her eyes up to his. 

“Come ‘ere,” he urges and she follows his gentle hands, her damp underwear grazing his thigh as he shifts further up the bed. His fingers peel the fabric from her hips and she moves to drop them with the rest of their clothes, her body finally, beautifully, exposed to him. 

“You don’t have to,” she whispers as his gaze moves between the hair at the crux of her thighs and her face. “I know it’s not - “ 

“I want to taste you. Is that okay?” He asks softly, his thumbs tracing circles into the hollows of her hips. She shifts uneasily over him and then nods, giving him silent permission to guide her further up his body. 

When her knees bracket his shoulders he lifts his hands to graze along the back of her thighs, easing her down closer to his face until he’s able to reach her slit with his mouth. She jumps at the contact, her arms crossing over her chest as she looks down at him with a nervous expression. Her frame is tense as his tongue flicks over her clit, her thighs nearly shaking as he runs his hands along her skin. He can tell she’s not relaxed, her whole being tight above him, and he realizes quickly that no matter what he does she’s not going to come like this. 

“Has no one ever done this for you before?” He asks carefully, in between kisses along her thighs as his hands move soothingly over her legs. She shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling, shrugging her shoulders. “Do you want me to stop?” He doesn’t want to but he will without question if she says to stop, his concern for pushing her too far making him tense below her. 

“It just - it feels like I’m going to smother you like this, and your ribs are all jacked and, it's stupid but, you know,” she says and laughs nervously, motioning towards him as her composure cracks and she realizes what she’s just said. 

“I promise you won’t but if that’s all that’s holding you back…” He shifts until one shoulder is out from between her legs, his palm pressing to her stomach until she’s rolling onto her back. “Is this better?” He asks from between her thighs and she sputters, stifling her laugh as he grins down at her. 

“Honestly, where the fuck did you come from?” She counters, her fingers threading through his hair as her heels find a comfortable spot to rest at his sides, pointedly not moving him from between her legs. 

“The same place as you, I’m pretty sure - I mean, we took the same cab, didn’t we?” He jokes and his grin appears for the briefest of moments. It feels strange to have it on his lips, foreign now after all these weeks of lonely pain.

“Your're right. We did. And yes - this is better. I’m okay with this,” she adds, motioning with her hand to where he rests. He feels the heat in his belly coil tighter at the invitation and he moves a palm from where it’s cupped her hip, his fingers spreading out against her belly. The ache in his ribs flares for a moment but he swallows it, determined to push through and give her this. Give her himself because it’s all he has left. 

His hand moves between her thighs and spreads her open, his tongue laving along her center before his lips wrap around her nub. She jolts under his mouth but doesn’t pull away, her legs tensing for a moment as he continues. Fingers dip and explore, teasing her entrance as she lets a flustered sound escape her lips. Cassian revels in the sound and shifts himself closer, mouthing at her entrance and tasting her like he was a man starved. Lips and tongue graze and press as he eases a finger into her, curling it inside before withdrawing it and replacing it with a second. 

He continues his ministrations without fail, drawing noises from her like an instrument. Listening for what makes her keen, and what doesn’t, he works her until her hips are rolling against his mouth again and again. She’s close, he’s sure of it, and so he hums his lips against her clit and curls his fingers to tap against the spot inside of her that makes her try to break the hold of his hand at her belly. 

“ _ Cassian _ ,” she moans and she shifts her hips from the bed, her feet pressing into the mattress as he follows her movements with his mouth at her core. She comes with him between her legs, her body tensing and her fingers pulling at his hair until the remnants of her orgasm start to ease. 

When her muscles have stopped clenching and her legs have weakened their press against his shoulders, he eases his fingers from inside her and trails his lips in open-mouthed kisses along her thigh. 

“I think I’m going to have beard rash,” she says after a moment while he chuckles at her knee. His palms soothe down her skin and he leans against her shins, his length hard but merely an afterthought as he watches her come back down from her high. 

“Sorry about that,” he says softly, his eyes hooded as she slowly looks back up to him. 

“Never be sorry about making someone see stars like that,” she growls and reaches for him, pulling him quickly down until his torso is cradled between her legs. “Now I want to fuck you because I want to see if you can make the second one better than the first.” 

He grins at the challenge and it’s the first smile he’s had in months that hasn’t felt like it was pulled from his soul. There’s an unspoken connection between them that doesn’t ask what the dark flickers are in each other’s eyes, the hesitations and biting remarks that had bonded them together. 

“Condom?” He asks as he rotates his hips against hers, his length pressed between her thighs. She twists to the side of the bed, reaching into the drawer and palming blindly until her fingers wrap around the last package in the back. When she pulls it out he nearly groans aloud, the recognition making him curse internally. 

“Chickening out?” She questions, her own uncertainty edging into her voice. 

“No, not at all,” he replies and tears the packet, hoping it’ll fit even though he knows from experience it won’t. They were the wrong size, standard issue as part of their kits, but something he always had to be cognizant of when he was out in the field - if he were to ever engage in activities like  _ this _ while he was out there, which he really did not.  _ Pinche imbécil _ . The rubber stretches along his length and he can’t help the hiss that escapes him, the tight ache from the too-small sheath making him wish he hadn’t been dumb enough to not see where this was going earlier. He could have brought his own. He could have bought some. He could have, should have - 

“You okay?” Her question makes him look up to where she’s leaning against the headboard, her brow furrowed in concern. 

“Yeah - it’s just - it’s tight. And I don’t say that as a ploy or anything to get around not wearing it - please don’t think that - “ 

“Are you trying to tell me the condom is  _ too small _ , Cassian?” She whispers and her voice is hazy, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as she looks from his eyes to his length with surprise. 

“It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine,” he diverts, leaning in to capture her lips in his. He could get through this - what was a bit of tightness when his entire body ached everyday as though it couldn’t decide whether he was about to fall apart or explode? 

Her hands find his chin and she eases him back slightly, her gaze searching his for a tense moment as she pauses. “We don’t have to use it, if you don’t want to. I’ve got an IUD, and we’re both clean, right? I’m okay if you don’t want to - “ 

“I’m used to being uncomfortable,” he blurts and stills, his mouth drying with the truth that had escaped him.  _ Please don’t say anything. Please don’t break our agreement to not talk about the things that broke us. _

“I don’t want you to be,” she replies bluntly and her hand drops between them, rolling the edge of the condom down his length until he exhales in relief. “I don’t want you to suffer, not for anything, okay?” 

Her words make something crack inside of him, a cavern widening as she returns her lips to his in a soft kiss. He takes it openly and eases her down onto her back, his body pressing hers into the mattress. His clumsy, damaged hand drifts from her cheek to her neck, over the crystal necklace that rests there and if he weren’t so hazy with lust he would notice the tension that runs through her body at the touch. 

But he doesn’t and his other hand reaches for her wrist and pins it to the mattress, his battered torso heavy against her. 

“ _ Please don’t, _ ” she murmurs, breaking their kiss. Cassian freezes at the noise, his gaze snapping to hers as he hears the pain in her tone. Her eyes are tightly shut, a deep furrow in her brow as her head turns away from him. 

“Hey - Jyn. Shh, hey what’s wrong?” Cassian urges and releases her wrist to prop himself up. The hand that had been resting at her throat rises to brush the hair from her face, his touch like a feather on her skin. The change seems to be enough because she forces an exhale past her lips, her whole body loosening as she releases the clench of her jaw. 

“Sorry,” she says as her eyes open, still not meeting his. He shifts onto his side, off of where his body has crowded her, and watches as she takes a few more deep breaths. 

He isn’t an expert in trauma by any means but Cassian isn’t blind. He can see the ongoing battle behind her eyes, the way she’s fighting against her own memories, and though he wants to help he knows that if he does it wrong he’ll likely make it worse. So instead he waits, his body tight with nerves as she fitfully rubs her face. 

“Sorry,” she repeats when her brow has softened and her eyes finally land on him, focused and clear. 

“You okay?” He counters carefully, unwilling to spook her further. 

“Yes. Just - I don’t like people touching my neck, okay?” 

“Okay. That’s okay. We don’t have to do - “ 

“No, I still want to. But maybe I should be on top?” Her words are hesitant and Cassian thinks for a moment that this is a bad idea, that he’s going to hurt her more if he goes through with it. But then she smiles at him and she rolls to her side and reaches her hand to his brow, softening out his own worry lines. “I’m okay, I promise.” 

He gives in because she’s beautiful and strong and he needs to trust that she knows herself well enough to make her own decisions. So he adjusts onto his back as she grins and moves to her knees, her hand sliding against where his length has softened between his legs. 

“Do you still want me, Cassian?” She whispers into his ear, her fingers dragging him back to life with their clever movements. 

“Like water in a desert,” he mumbles in return and she laughs, nodding and then lifting her leg to straddle his hips. She grabs at where he’s locked his hands at his sides, unsure where to place them, and moves them to her hips. 

“I like the feeling of your fingers biting into my skin,” she whispers against his neck, her hands grazing over his knuckles as he tightens his hold once more to the way she prefers. Her hips rotate against his lap and he’s quickly hard again, his length sliding through her folds. “Can I fuck you now?” She asks lowly and he nearly short-circuits, his head nodding as she lifts and slides him inside of her. 

She rises and falls, a slow motion of her hips rolling as her breasts drag across the hair of his chest. He lets his mouth find her shoulder, her collar, his lips tracing the skin and listening to the sounds of her low moans. When his teeth pull gently at her nipple she stutters out a breath and scrapes her nails against his scalp. The feeling of her wrapped around him, squeezing him in her heat, makes his body ache in a way he’d forgotten it knew how to in all these months. 

They chase their highs together, bodies working and fighting to get the upper hand as they draw pleasure from one another. When Cassian shifts and leans against her chest, his forehead pressed to her breast, she sighs and moves faster, somehow sensing how close he is to the edge. He tries to convey his appreciation by pulling her closer, increasing the friction and letting his fingers bite into her back, her waist, before he moves his hand to where they’re connected. She nearly falls apart as he presses at her core, teasing her higher with every circular motion against her nub. 

“I’m close,” he whispers into her neck, his body tight as he tries to hold back. 

“Me too,” she replies and it’s barely a breath in his ear, her arms wrapped so tightly around him that he feels like their bodies are bound together. 

“I want you to come first so I can pull out,” he says, always a man focused on the logistics of things. She laughs softly into his temple and increases her pace, her lips dragging back to his as she steals a kiss. 

“You can come inside me. It’s okay,” she tells him and he nearly breaks right then, the thought almost sending him over the edge. It doesn’t help that her laughter makes her body tighten around him, the pressure more intense as she drives him mad. 

It isn’t long after that he feels her breath quicken, her movements turning jarring as she grips the back of his skull and tucks her head into the side of his neck. He feels the first flutters of her orgasm shudder through her and he moves his mouth to capture her lips with his, one hand holding her in place as the other tries to drag out the sensation as long as he can. Her teeth sinking into his lip and her nails scratching his skin is what makes him fall apart, his hips jutting up into her and trying to deepen their connection as he empties himself inside of her. It feels surreal to cling to her frame as they both come down from their peaks, her breath on his chest as he rests his cheek on the crown of her head. 

Eventually, she shifts and he slips out of her, the loss of her heat more painful than he would ever admit aloud. 

He doesn’t know how long they sit wrapped up in one another’s embrace, their bodies cooling and their breathing returning to normal as the sounds from the street below slink through the window. 

“I need to go clean up,” she pauses, nuzzling her nose against him before she draws back. Her eyes meet his in the low light and she measures him up, searching, before her lips capture his once more. When she pulls away this time it’s for good, her small frame crawling off the bed and disappearing through the doorway. 

Cassian slowly eases himself to the side of the bed and searches for his clothes. He almost doesn’t want to find them - he’d rather stay here in her apartment, sheltered from the world and a counter to the loneliness that awaits him when he leaves. But she’d left the room and he knew that was the first sign of her kicking him out - this wasn’t his first one-night stand. 

“Oh,” she gasps when she returns to the room, a robe swallowing her as she looks down at him. “Do you want - I mean, you don’t have to but - ” she stutters and comes towards him and tightens her robe, looking at him with wild eyes. 

“I assumed that’s what you wanted…” He answers and she frowns, her expressive green eyes sharpening. He’d seen that look before, hadn’t he? 

“It’s not. But if that’s what you want - ” 

“It isn’t.” His words make her still and her eyes snap up to his, searching for something in his gaze that he’s not sure he can offer. 

“So you’ll stay?” She asks hesitantly and for the briefest moment he thinks she should ignore him - that she should run for the fucking hills and save herself from his chaotic life. But the needy side of him - the one that was desperate for anything to distract him from himself - latches onto the idea quicker than the darker part of him. 

“I want to,” he replies and pauses for another minute, waiting for the tension to ease. 

“Then can we go back to bed?” She drops her robe on the back of her desk chair and tosses the blankets aside, crawling onto the mattress and turning to watch him sit still at the edge of her bed. “What?” 

He shakes his head and rubs his face, sighing for a moment to settle himself. It hadn’t been long enough for him to be in this deep but he knew that part of him was so messed up that any form of comfort would be something he clinged to. He was starved for touch, for laughter and warmth. Climbing over next to her, Cassian forces himself to relax as he moves under the blankets and turns to face her once more. She watches him with a measuring gaze, her makeup smudged and her hair hanging almost in her eyes. There’s something about the way she watches him, how her eyes flicker over his face for a few moments as though scanning him for some unknown secret. It makes him uneasy. It makes him want to press in closer. 

“Cassian, I need to tell you that sometimes I have nightmares. I don’t need you to do anything if they happen, but I just didn’t want you to be surprised,” she says evenly, peering at him as he shifts closer. In response he lets his hand find her waist as she adjusts to hitch her leg over his thigh, drawing him against her. 

“Don’t worry, I have them too,” he answers against her temple, her breath sliding warmly across his chest. 

Sleep comes for her not long after, her heartbeat slowing and her inhales evening out as he draws small circles into her skin. Closing his eyes, he tries to focus on happy thoughts - ones like the way she’d smiled at him after a joke, or the way she’d made a crude remark in his ear that had nearly made him trip over his own feet. 

It’s thoughts of Jyn that drag him into the first real sleep he’s had in awhile, no nightmares for either of them. 

When the morning comes and the sunlight creeps through the curtains, Cassian wakes with a start and looks at the empty spread of mattress beside him. Her warmth is gone, the sheets rustled from where she’d lain. There’s no sound of her moving around her apartment, no trace of her clothes either. 

It feels empty without her here, the hole in his chest reopening from where he’d stitched it closed just the night before. Rolling onto his back, Cassian covers his face with his pillow and yells into it until his lungs ache. He waits almost an hour before he gets up and gets dressed, leaving her apartment with an uncertainty in his gut. It didn’t feel right to just leave like this but she’d gone too, without any goodbye, and it felt increasingly intrusive for him to keep laying in her bed without her. 

He had to go. 

He just hated that he was alone again. Not even ghosts named Jyn would settle for him. 


	4. FOUR MONTHS POST

_ Jyn _

She was messing this all up. She couldn’t get it right - not for him, not for herself - and it was starting to show. 

Jyn found him nearly every week after that first night. She’d text or call, make an excuse to ask him to come out with her. He’d go because there was a look in his eyes that said he needed this just as much as she did. They’d drink - heavily most of the time - and then they’d return to one or the other’s apartment and fuck until her bones ached (at least that’s how it would go once his ribs and wrist healed, his body up until that point a fragile thing she couldn’t help but worry about as she cradled him between her legs). At dawn she would force herself to disappear, leaving the bed with the sharp hangover prickling up her spine, the warmth of Cassian’s solid body leaving her cold and jaded. 

On the nights where they ended up at hers she would find herself running from her own apartment, escaping to Bodhi’s or the gym or anywhere but staying in the bed that felt too comfortable for her to fit. Those were the harder days - where she had to fight against her own wants in order to keep from getting lost in it all. 

She knew it wasn’t right, what she was doing. She knew there was a cost to every morning that he woke up alone. But in all honesty Jyn had no idea where to start at making it better. Cassian had become a release valve for her after everything in her life that had gone wrong - he was the one person who didn’t press her for more, who didn’t try to trap her in with his own shortcomings. When she called he never said  _ no _ and maybe that was good or maybe it was terrible but she didn’t have the luxury of knowing which it was. 

Jyn was lost. She’d thought she was better when she’d signed up for the Alliance mission - really, she had. She’d worked on her issues, had fought to make something of herself that she could be proud of, but Scarif had broken her again. All her years fighting to get free of foster care, of the miserable places she’d ended up after Mr Gerrera died, all of it was upended by one man’s death and the blood that had spattered on her skin. 

And now she was back in her struggle, clawing at the darkness that closed in around her and made her feel like she was slowly suffocating under its press. 

For the first few months after her return she’d managed to simply get by. She took a few home-based contracts, certified in a few more systems and generally went about her daily life. It was a hazy life, but one none-the-less and she used it to numb the way she felt since returning home. Occasionally she would reach out to Shara or Bodhi, the two familiar faces meeting for coffee when they could, but they couldn’t fill the void she had developed from her mission and whenever she got close to broaching it they shied away. 

Scarif was over for them. They weren’t reliving it every time they closed their eyes. At least not how she was, she realized. 

It was hard to move through it - move past it - when it caught her so often unaware in her moments of weakness. More than once she found herself rubbing her face until the skin was tender, the anxious reminder of the warm tinny liquid like a flash when she was least expecting it. When Bodhi had called her out on it one day she’d managed to blame it on a rash. He hadn’t pressed but before he’d left he’d found a way to slip her a card for a trauma group in the city. She’d wanted to throw it out but it sat like lead on her kitchen counter instead. 

When Cassian called all those nights ago it had been like a switch had been flipped in her head. The concern, the painful worry, had blossomed out of her hardened shell and she’d frantically called Bodhi begging him to help her find him. She’d known then like she was looking in a mirror that Cassian was struggling just as much as her, the man’s hesitant smile from Scarif flickering in her mind’s eye. He was hurting and he needed help and she could not stop herself from throwing all of her cards on the table when she ran to his apartment from the HQ office. 

His friend Kay had almost kept her from him and maybe, in retrospect, that would have been better for them both. She was clearly not in a state to be much good to him but a part of her refused to let him disappear without her. And so she’d pushed her way through and into his life and now she was dragging him down with her as she slowly spiraled further into her hole. 

She needed another drink but it was hardly noon and even though it was Friday she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t call Cassian today, that she’d try to get through this without needing him to hold her until she fell asleep. 

She hadn’t slept all week. Not really. The only time she  _ was _ managing to get any sleep lately was when Cassian was wrapped around her, all tacky-sweaty skin from their fucking and scars that flushed red under her nails. Stars, she was ruining it and she didn’t know how to curb her cravings. Was he even a craving? Is that how she was defining what she felt when she messaged him each week? She was disgusting. She was a mess. 

She forces herself to let another week pass and she stops herself from reaching out so many times that she almost tosses her phone out the window. She picks up a contract to take her mind off of him and only once does he reach out into her self-imposed silence. 

_ Everything okay? _

She tries not to read into his concern, instead shoving her reaction into the back of her mind where she didn’t have to process it. It was safer back there, tucked away in a place that held all of the once-good things that had meant something to her. 

Cassian and her didn’t have that reliance yet, that vocal trust. While both of them had a good time together, Jyn knew it was only a matter of time before he found someone else, someone more giving, who would help him fill the holes she found open in his soul. She couldn’t be that to him - she didn't have enough to give - and she didn’t want to even bother thinking that he could be that for her if it all was impossible. 

No. She had to keep him at arms length until she finally got her feet back under her and rejoined the productive world of the living. 

There’s just that one annoying problem - that it was  _ so hard _ to keep him locked out. Like back in Scarif when all she could think about was how he was ignoring her, how he couldn’t look at her - her thoughts spun on how he must be doing, was he sleeping regularly again? Did he just roll over on the mornings where he discovered her gone, the sleep easily overtaking him once again? Or was he just as fucked up as her? Did every morning’s empty realization sting like a wasp? 

With a growl and a shake of her head, Jyn pushes thoughts of him aside and goes about her life once more, day in and day out. When Friday rolls around again, three weeks after her last contact, she puts her phone in a drawer and crawls into bed for the afternoon to try to sleep away her wants. She doesn’t sleep but she isn’t awake either, her body somewhere in a mixed jumble of waking life. 

It’s dark when she finally manages to pull herself out of bed, the evening light low in her apartment as she pads quietly down the hallway. Her kitchen is a mess and her cupboards are bare, the few things she keeps on hand almost empty after she forgot to get groceries earlier in the week. With a grumble and a slap of her hand on the counter, Jyn heads back to her room and pulls on an oversized sweater and fresh pair of bottoms. She doesn’t bother looking in the mirror -  _ can’t  _ because ghosts don’t have reflections - before she steps out of her apartment, the hat pulled low over her brow as she turns towards the grocer at the end of the block. 

Grabbing the essentials, Jyn pays at the counter with the spare cash she has leftover from her last job and holds her grocery bag tight to her chest. She manages to make it back to her building without the bag tearing or anything toppling over the edge and she says a small thanks for that, the gentle mercy following her until she reaches her apartment door. 

“You’re not dead then,” Cassian greets as she rounds the corner to her hallway, one hand on his hip and the other pawing at the unkept beard on his chin. She loves that beard. She  _ hates _ it, too. 

“No. I’m still here,” she replies deftly, switching arms to move her keys into her dominant hand. The metal slips between her fingers and she hates that her instinct is to fight even though it’s  _ Cassian _ and she would let him tear her down piece by piece if he decided to. She would let him destroy her if it meant he would stay. 

“Good. Okay. Good. Well, I’ll just - I’ll leave then,” he mutters and his mask falters as he looks at her, finally  _ seeing _ her through all her layers and smudged makeup. His mouth tightens with recognition, his gaze flickering to the bottle in her bag, and for the briefest of moments she thinks he’s going to say something, that he’ll call her out for her failures. But he doesn’t. His voice is low, even, when he shifts and says, “I was worried -  _ am _ worried - about you.” 

She doesn’t know what to say to that. Sure, when he’d jumped off a pier she’d not let anything get between her and making sure that he was alright. But this was different, right? He was worried about  _ her _ and she didn’t deserve it. She wasn’t worthy of his thoughts or his concern and the realization that he was wasting it on her only made her ache in a way she didn’t quite understand. 

“I don’t…” She chews her lip because she doesn’t know what else to say. The bag crinkles under her arm and she realizes that it hurts to stand here and hold it, the keys digging sharply into her skin. 

“Can we talk? Just for a little bit and then I’ll go? I promise - just talking. We don’t have to - we don’t need to do anything else,” he adds hastily and she nearly sputters a laugh. Stars, all she  _ wanted _ was to do anything else but talk. Hadn’t that been the relationship they’d built? 

“If that’ll satisfy you,” she answers and it’s haughty and sharp and she doesn’t mean it to be but her body hurts and his eyes are too knowing and she just wants to put down these damn groceries before they crash all over her hallway floor. 

He steps away from her door as she steps up to slide her key in the lock. He keeps his distance as she moves towards the kitchen and puts the bag down, turning to haphazardly place dishes in the sink and tidy the small space. When he comes to stand at the island between them she pushes the bag quickly towards where the group therapy card sits precariously out in the open. She didn’t want him to see. Didn’t want him to know that someone somewhere was declaring her in need of help. 

“How are you doing, Jyn?” He asks abruptly, all his tact and sauve gone as he stands plainly in her kitchen. It feels like they’re back in Scarif, like they’re in her room and the remnants of her desk chair are poking into her heels. 

“I’m fine. How are you doing?” She lies. He looks away and clenches his hands before turning back to her. 

“We’ve done this already.” And he’s right, they have, and the pain is still there. 

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it,” Jyn counters and she begins emptying her grocery bag because what else is she going to do with him standing in her kitchen as though he’d always belonged there? 

“I want to walk out of here knowing you’re going to be okay if I do.” 

His words make her pause where she’s sliding the vodka into her freezer, the cold chill sending gooseflesh across her skin. Turning back to look at him, she rubs her face and then looks at the ceiling. The tears prick at the corners of her eyes and she tries to swallow them back if only to keep some semblance of strength in her voice. 

“I’ll be fine. I’m always fine,” she adds because it’s true. She’d survived a life in foster care, the death of a semi-parent who was almost like a father to her. She’d fought and she’d lived even when they’d tried to force her into the ground time and time again. She was a survivor and he should have known that - hadn’t she told him already? Not with words but with the way she pressed on even when it hurt so much she couldn’t breathe? 

“I don’t want you to just be ‘fine’. We both know it’s not enough anymore.” 

“It has to be. It’s all I’ve got,” she snaps and her palm burns as it makes contact with the counter. Cassian doesn’t flinch with the sound and she’s surprised how straight he keeps his face as he slowly steps closer to her. 

“It isn’t. You’ve got me and I can help if you’ll just - “ 

“If  _ what _ , Cassian? If I just cry on your shoulder? If I let you in on all my deep dark secrets so that you can decide then that maybe it’s too much? That’s not  _ good enough _ . It won’t be enough, it never is!” 

“Stop trying to run away from help!” He shouts abruptly and she nearly laughs because how dare he say something like that to her when every time she’s tried to help him he’s gone and dug himself further into the shit? 

“Like you’re one to talk,” she hisses. His body jerks at that, almost like she’d hit him, and the taste of blood in her mouth is like a siren forcing her body to tense. “You’re barely keeping yourself together. I see it in you too. I’m not blind.” 

“At least I try to  _ stay _ ,” he growls and it’s her turn to flinch, his counterpunch doing a one-two on her chest. 

“If you don’t like the way I spend my mornings - “ 

“It’s weakness, that’s all it is - “ 

“If I wanted to then I would - “ 

“I don’t believe you,” he murmurs and she closes her eyes, finally aware of the trap she’s walked herself into. 

She wasn’t a fool. The moment she’d found him outside of her apartment she’d known it would end up somewhere like this. That’s what they were good at - sex without talking, sex without feelings. It was their skillset with each other, the basic comfort they could provide even though they were both drowning in their own issues. 

Taking a step towards him, Jyn reaches her hands out to his chest and tugs his shirt until he’s close enough to feel her breath on his neck. His hands stay tight at his sides as she lifts and presses her lips to his, careful, inviting, before he shivers out a sigh. 

“I didn’t come here for this,” he protests and to her surprise he steps back from her, the abandonment of it almost making her shatter right then and there. “I want to know how I can help. How I can make sure you’re alright.” 

Jyn turns away and clutches the crystal pendant at her chest, the tears coming in blindingly as she forces air into her lungs. It hurts to stand here. To breathe. To do anything when he’s so close but he’s pushed her so far away. 

“How do I help you, Jyn?” He asks after a moment and she can feel him hovering just behind her, his heat wrapping around her as though it were his arms. She wishes it was. 

“Don’t push me away,” she whispers, too low to hear. 

“Jyn?” He lifts his hand to her chin, tilting it up until her reddened eyes meet his. 

“I said, ‘don’t push me away’,” she repeats. The recognition of it makes his brow soften and he sighs, moving closer until his body is flush against hers and his arms have gathered her close. 

“I won’t. I couldn’t, not - “ She steals his words from his lips with a kiss, leaning up on her toes to reach. He meets her halfway and she takes it as a sign to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him closer. 

They stumble their way to her room and it’s familiar, like that night all those nights ago, but this time where the push and shove had been before there’s only tenderness to their touch. They’re both fragile broken things and the hollowness of their skin is like a flashing beacon that they needed to be gentle in this if either were to survive. 

When Jyn first goes to remove her shirt, their bodies entwined on her mattress, Cassian forces her hands to stall at her waist and seeks her gaze in the low light from the kitchen. 

“I need you to stay tonight. I don’t want - I can’t - wake up without you tomorrow,” he whispers desperately, his fingers tight around her own. “If you don’t want me to push you away then I need you to do the same for me Jyn. I need you to not run.”

“Cassian,” she says because she doesn’t know how to make a promise that she isn’t sure she can keep. 

“Please. Please just say you’ll try,” he pleads and she nods because she can try. She can always try. 

Clothes are pulled away and pale skin is exposed as they move together, hands dragging across skin and setting her alight. She tries to keep it equal - taking him in her mouth after he grazes between her thighs - but when he slides into her there’s no need to pay mind to it. They rock and thrust, his length moving inside of her and making her body sing. His teeth scrape her neck as she moans into his chest, the feeling of him below her, within her, almost too much to contain. 

She feels the orgasm start to build in her core and her hand drops between them to work herself, to chase after it, before he bats her hand away. 

“Let me,” he urges and his fingers twitch and press until she’s a withering mess in his lap, her body tightening as she jerks around his cock. He doesn’t last long after she comes, his own orgasm causing his body to ripple before he pushes in fully and groans his release into her warmth. 

After she returns from cleaning up she slips onto her side of the bed, curling into his side as he holds his arm out for her. It’s the first time they’ve been sober for this and she can’t remember the last time she’d felt like she was actually wanted, the feeling hitting her like a bucket of cold water dumped overhead. 

“I’m sorry,” he says after a while, maybe noticing but maybe not, the blankets cocooning them as his thumb runs along her jaw. 

“For what?” She hopes it’s not something he’s done. Hopes this isn’t a confession that’ll ruin tonight. 

“I said we wouldn’t do this if you let me in.” Her smile escapes before she can school it, her eyes closing for the briefest of moments. 

“We both knew it was a lie, I’m pretty sure.” 

“I swear I didn’t. I had actually thought - “ 

"You could resist me? Fat chance," she jokes and he sighs, a smile lingering on his lips.

"So that's what it is then, you're irresistible?" She shrugs and he shifts somehow closer, his nose bumping hers. "I'm sorry I haven't been more present since we came back. I've left the hard work to you and it's not fair, I know."

“It’s okay. It's been hard for us both I think. But I’ve missed you, just so you know,” she admits after a minute, watching as his mask disappears altogether. 

“I missed you too. I wasn’t kidding about wanting you to be here when I wake up though. Please try not to run from me tomorrow.” 

She kisses him because she can’t say it. She kisses him because she missed the taste of him. She kisses him because maybe he’ll understand that every time she runs away she hates herself a little more and that if she could just beat it, just this once, maybe she’d hate herself a little less. 

When morning comes, she rolls onto her back and tries to force herself to stay put. Her chest aches like she’s holding her breath, her eyes clamped tightly shut as she avoids looking out the window into the daylight. She’s half ready to bolt when Cassian’s hand shoots out towards her, panicked as it tries to find her across the mattress. His fingers link around her wrist and it makes him look up at her in surprise, his face groggy from sleep and lines from his pillow marring his cheek. 

“You’re still here,” he states with a measured voice. 

“It is my apartment, isn’t it?” She responds and she hates it but maybe she doesn’t hate it that much when all he does in return is smile and curl himself back around her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'allllllll this isolation is killing me. I need to go outside and see people, do things. I am not meant to be cooped up in the house for weeks on end! I hope you're surviving better than me and that you've got a bit of respite in your day <3


	5. SIX MONTHS POST

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise, things start to get better soon and I thank you for reading along on this bumpy road. This chapter has a touch of dubious consent, depending on your interpretation. In my head though, knowing the backstory I've created and all the details, it isn't non-con but I want to warn you just in case that can be a trigger for anyone.

_ Cassian _

They're drinking too much. Fighting too much. Not physically - never physically because neither of them let it get that far - but their words might as well be razors they force the other to swallow, sharp and unforgiving as they pick at each other's faults. 

He doesn't want it to be like this. He's desperate for it to not be because it's Jyn and he cares about her ( _ loves _ her even, maybe), but neither of them are able to talk through the ashes in their mouths. There are ghosts hovering over their shoulders and they poke and prod like barbed wire when they least expect it.

Cassian tries to be better, really, he tries, but the sleepless nights and the missed meals and the alcohol that they use to numb themselves creates a vicious cycle that he cannot break no matter how hard he tries.

He thinks Jyn is trying too, is almost certain of it, but when she relapses it's like the stopper on a tub has been pulled and all the goodness they've filled up around them is sucked down with everything else. She tries to keep it together, she works so hard at it, but sometimes no matter how tightly he holds her at night it's not enough to fuse her bits and pieces back into form.

Those are the days when she disappears and he has no idea where she's gone. Sometimes it's a couple hours, sometimes a few days, but she's never been gone more than a week since that last time she'd gone radio silent and he'd shown up at her door.

It's been eight days and three hours since she left his apartment though. Eight days and three hours since he rolled over to pull her close and her side of the bed was cold. 

He was trying not to worry. Really, he was, but it wasn't like her to be gone this long and that was scarier than the worry so he tried not to think about it.

"You need to become self-sufficient, Cassian," Kay says from his kitchen, his friend tidying up the few out of place things he'd let slip the past week.

"I am," he snaps in return, finally looking up from the security analysis he'd been trying to focus on since Tuesday. 

"I'd argue you only think you are because you have a high level of self-confidence and it makes you proud until you trip," the man counters. It makes Cassian want to growl his response, the anger quick on his lips, but he swallows it back because the man was here on his lunch break doing him a favour. 

Kay didn't need to come over to Cassian's apartment this regularly. He didn't need to clean and get groceries, harass him until he shaved or took a shower, but the man did it almost every other day without question. No matter how harsh Cassian was with him he still kept his cool and showed up, over and again trying to help him break out of his funk. He'd been the one friend to stand by him even when Cassian withdrew from the world of the living and retreated into this semblance of half-life. 

And so Cassian tried not to push too hard, tried to be thankful someone cared about him enough to keep showing up even when he was being an ass. It was hard, especially because Kay was - well -  _ Kay _ \- but he did it because if he didn't there'd be no one left and he couldn't do this alone.

He hadn't had a drink since the night Jyn left, had told himself he wouldn't just to prove he could. That morning they'd been fighting over it before she'd jumped him, swallowing his arguments with her mouth on his, distracting him into bed like she somehow always seemed to do. He couldn't blame her for it, not in the least, because every time she coaxed his clothes from his frame he knew that he was lost. She couldn't be denied and he wouldn't argue about _ this _ because one time she'd asked him not to push her away. But when he'd tried to circle back later that same night it hadn't been the same playing field - the lights had been lowered and the shadows that haunted them were darker than either of them were prepared for.

"I'm merely trying to inform you that your dependence on another individual at this point in your life is affecting not only your professional deliverables but your ability to maintain a stable household. You've relied on me not once but twice this week to assist with basic errands, both of which you are highly capable - "

"It isn't like that and you know it," Cassian snaps, glaring across the room. "Don't try to tell me that it's her fault that you've decided my laundry was out of control and my fridge was too bare."

"There was no reference to Jyn in my statement," Kay answers and shifts uneasily on his feet.

"But you meant it. You don't like her."

"It's not that I don't like her. It's because you're behaving erratically as of late and the only correlation is the arrival of her in your life. It does not mean causation, of course, but one can assume - "

"That my behaviour is solely because of a woman and not at all possible because I got a man killed in Scarif - right?" Cassian shouts, bursting to his feet. His friend stands up to his full height and though it could be menacing, the colour of his face pales and his expression turns to one of regretful realization.

"That specific detail was not shared prior to my current analysis," Kay responds softly. The man looks almost contrite, taken aback at the truth he'd let slip. Cassian didn't need this, not today, on top of everything else. 

"Thank you for helping me be an adult, Kay. You can go," he says more forcefully than necessary.

"Cassian, this is not - "

"Just go!" The words rip from his throat, raw and angry and so very, very exposed. Kay hovers for another moment, his gaze directed at the floor, before he shakes his head.

"I'll see you tomorrow then," he announces and grabs his things, stalking out of the apartment like it was his idea to leave. 

Cassian collapses back onto his couch and scrubs at his face until his skin tints red. His chest aches as he looks back at his computer, at the open document and it's tap-tap-tapping cursor. He had to get this project sent in to HQ or the contract would be voided. He had to just focus and get it done but his brain refused to even attempt.

It was like he was back on that road, reliving every second over and over like a background noise humming in his ears. The tangled words, the fragmented images. The blood smeared across Jyn's cheek and her half-strangled grunt of pain.

She'd made that same sound nine days ago, hadn't she?

_ "It's different for me, I have it under control," Jyn hisses and sets down her glass. Cassian shakes his head and closes the freezer as she starts to pull it open. His hand stings from where it's clapped against the steel. _

_ "You don't. Neither of us do," he responds sharply, unblinking. Jyn attempts to open the freezer again and he leans into it, his body weight keeping it closed. _

_ "Fine then. It's a problem, I'll admit it so you can get off your high fucking horse. What can I do about it tonight?" _

_ "We've already had a few. Let's not - " _

_ "If it's a problem then however many it is doesn't matter, Cassian. Don't try to pull that righteous shit on me." His body feels her words like a slap, his feet easing back a step as she crowds in. "Let me have a drink and then we can fuck and sleep it off like we always do." _

_ "No," he breathes, the last of his willpower fading as she presses herself against him. Her mouth finds his throat, hands twisting in the fabric of his shirt, and he doesn't want to give in but she nips at his shoulder and the pain bursts through the bubble of want and makes his knees weak. _

_ Sensing the opening, Jyn pushes him back a step and leans back. She makes quick work of opening the freezer door and pulling out the bottle of vodka before he can realize what's happening. When he finally does he nearly growls at being played, his hand striking out and knocking the bottle out of her grip. It crashes to the floor, shattering on the tile, and the look Jyn gives him could strip paint from the walls. _

_ "What the _ fuck _?" She shouts, eyes wide and fists tightening at her sides. Readying for a fight. She was  _ always _ readying for a fight, wasn't she? He just couldn't figure out  _ why _. Was it him? Was he the one making everything more volatile? And why couldn't he stop? _

_ "Let's just quit. Cold turkey. Let's just fix this - "  _ fix us -  _ he leaves unsaid, his palms resting on her shoulders. She tries to shrug him off, to push past him, but he keeps her in place with his thumbs pressing into her collar. _

_ "It's not fair! You can't decide this for us both, Cassian. Maybe you can live with yourself and your perfect fucking life but I can't. I don't want to feel like this every fucking day until I finally bite it." Her voice is sharp but it wavers, giving away the little control she has over herself as she tries to keep from combusting.  _

_ "Please Jyn, please, let's try," he whispers.  _

_ He watches as her expression evolves, surprise to disbelief, worry and then a stark and angry hurt. Her hands rise and she pushes at his shoulders until he stumbles back, shock filtering into his blood at the contact.  _

_ "How dare you?" She hisses and it's not anger in her voice but a dark threatening pain formed into words. He doesn't understand where the shift is coming from but when she pushes him backwards again he almost expects it, his fingers catching her wrists and holding her at bay. _

_ "Don't." His voice cracks in warning and she snarls, yanking her hands from his gentle grip and dropping them to her sides. Where her body language tells him to back off, all his brain can do is step closer, his hands reaching once more for hers in desperate search of her touch. She lets him link his fingers with hers, the small gesture giving him hope even though her nails bite into his skin. _

_ There's a frozen moment where neither of them breathe, he's pretty sure, but then it shifts and she jerks free again until she's pushing him against the counter, out of her way as she steps around him. _

_ "Don't leave," he blurts wildly, reaching for her and catching her retreating shoulder. It spins her to the side and she twists and squares off in front of him, her shoulders tight around her ears. She looks terrified, like an animal backed into a corner, but he can't stop his pursuit as he lifts his hands to her face and cradles her chin in his palms, thumbs grazing over her cheeks. He doesn't know where she's gone in her head that is making her ricochet so nervously in front of him but he wants to help. Needs to help, if they were going to survive this. _

_ Their eyes meet and the haze surrounding them clears a bit, though his breathing still comes out harsh. His touch is gentle - he's made sure of it - but the way her fingers wrap around his wrists is not. Her hold is almost bruising but he doesn't say anything because her touch still comes with a fire that he feels riddled through his bones. _

_ He isn't sure who is the first to close the distance, their lips crashing together as the hunger finally gets the better of them. It doesn't matter anyways, he thinks quickly as she whimpers into his mouth. He'd let her do whatever she wanted to him and he wouldn't fight her. He was hers and he didn't want to think about what would happen when she finally left for good. _

_ The tension in the room tightens as she deepens the kiss and pushes him back towards the fridge, her hands moving from his wrists to his neck, the back of his skull, as she pulls him down to her level. When she breaks the kiss abruptly he almost cries out, the loss of her almost painful, but then she forces him back another step and his defensive mechanisms take over.  _

_ Cassian doesn't know what makes him do it - if it's the madness or instinct - but he grabs her too tightly in return and tugs her towards him, his grip harsh. She almost yelps. He watches as she swallows it. Her face hardens just a little bit more and then goes blank like the flash of a screen clearing. _

_ If he'd been sober he'd have seen it. He'd have known to back off and let her settle. But he's not sober and he's on fire and so when she doesn't fight him anymore he presses forward and wraps himself around her like she's a rock to keep him steady in a storm. She plays along because it seems the better - safer - choice as he tangles his fingers in her hair and tugs her head back to expose her neck to him. _

_ Like a man starved he latches onto her, breathing her in and kissing and nipping up the bared skin. She lets him turn them until her back is to the fridge and his torso is trapping hers to the cold metal, crowding in close. She doesn't fight him when his hands sink to her pants, pushing them past her hips and to the floor. She doesn't say a thing as her hands hold tightly to his shirt, clutching until the knuckles are white. When his own pants join hers on the floor, not a word is spoken as she abruptly breaks the kiss and turns away from him to face the metal, her forehead pressing against the cool surface.  _

_ He doesn't ask and she doesn't say a thing when he kicks her heels apart and pulls her hips back towards him. When he rubs his length along her entrance he finally, finally, pauses and rests his cheek against her shoulder with a shaking breath.  _

_ "Jyn?" He asks, almost pleading, almost painful. He needs to hear her, just to know she was still there. That she was with him.  _

_ In response her fingers slip into the hair at his temple and she twists to reach his lips with her own, the kiss far more gentle than anything he deserved as he stands strung out behind her. He was lost, desperate, and she felt like home somehow, tethering him to this life even though that same tether was dragging her down with him and he could do nothing to break it. _

_ "It's okay," she murmurs against his lips before she turns back and faces her shadow in the reflection, her breath fogging out from her mouth in a steady pattern. _

_ He joins them not long after because he can't help himself, pushing into her heat and pulling back out almost just as fast. The movement forces her to brace herself, hands wide as the impact drags a grunt from her throat. The sound is rough and low and he hates that it spurs him on because what kind of person takes and takes and takes?  _

_ There's no denying that it feels different like this, tighter, harsher, but he doesn't have the capacity to pull out as she pushes back against him. His body seems to take over and his mindless hunger drives him into her again and again, the wet sounds of their coupling and his heavy breaths the only noise filling the air. She doesn't make another sound as his fingers bite bruise her skin, his forehead resting against her spine as he chases after his own release. When he comes with a strangled breath, his length deep inside her, he wraps himself around her until he's flush against her back and there's no more room between her body and his. _

_ It's only after he softens and slips out, their breathing finally returning to normal, that Cassian realizes he was the only one to get any pleasure from the moment. His jaw tenses at the thought - the failure - and he pointedly drops his hand to the crux of her thighs, his fingers moving against her in the way he knows she likes best.  _

_ But she brushes his touch away and it hurts - the rejection aches - his unspoken words thick on his tongue.  _

But I love you, Jyn. 

_ He almost shakes his head to clear it. He couldn't say it, not when she wasn't even looking at him. Not after… that.  _

_ And so he does what he believes will help, he presses his lips to her shoulder, curls in closer before dipping to grab her legs, lifting her up against his chest. He carries her past the broken glass from their argument, into the darkened bedroom and sets her on the mattress, leaving only to grab a warm cloth from the bathroom before returning to kneel at the edge of the bed. _

_ "May I?" He asks softly, his thumb grazing her chin. She nods and he runs the cloth between her legs, wiping up his mess in some semblance of apology, of tenderness.  _

_ Tossing the cloth to the corner of the room, Cassian eases himself down next to her and pulls her into his side because he doesn't know what else he can do, what he could say to make it better. This was not a drunken fuck or a way to get lost in one another and forget about the outside world. It was something darker, more sinister, and he didn't know why or how or if it was even possible to take it back and make it better without pushing her away. _

_ He loved her (probably) but he needed to admit to himself that they were killing each other by refusing to let go. Something had to give before it was too late, right? _

_ When she moves silently to tuck herself into his side, unflinching at the contact, Cassian tries not to think about how maybe he's finally broken her this time. How he's held on too tightly and now she's shattering in his arms.  _

He didn't want to think about that night. He didn't have time to think about how he'd fucked her and pushed her out of reach without even realizing it until it was too late. How sometime while he'd slept she'd gotten up, collected her things, and walked out of his life without bothering to say goodbye.

Was she ever coming back? He wasn't sure she was and maybe that was a good thing even though the thought made him sick. Something about the way her face had gone blank that day, how she'd moved like a rag doll against him as he pushed her against the metal and carried her across the apartment, made him understand the truth of it without a word ever being spoken. 

It wouldn't just be eight days and four hours now that Jyn would be gone. It would be forever and it would be because of him.


	6. EIGHT MONTHS POST

_ Jyn _

"Bodhi," she pleads, her cheek on fire as it presses into the ceramic of his bathtub. The water is too hot and she's burning up, her body aching and wretching and coming apart at the seams.

She didn't understand how she'd gotten here. She'd been out at a club, dancing and drinking and trying to find someone with a beard and brown eyes to take pity on her and take her home for the night. She wanted Cassian but she couldn't have him. Not since that last time. And so she'd had to find warm bodies elsewhere, another stranger to take up part of her bed that she didn't feel bad about kicking out after she'd used them. 

Had she found him? Or had she just given up and called her friend who never seemed to turn her away?

"Please, Bodhi," she moans and what she expects him to do she doesn't really know.

"Get cleaned up Jyn. We've got somewhere to go," he calls from the other side of the curtain. His voice sounds uncertain and she doesn't understand why. 

She sits in the tub for a while longer, the water pounding down on her head slowly starting to sober her up. When she finally gets back to her feet she's surprised to find herself still in her underthings, the fabric now clinging to her skin as fresh bruises dot across her limbs. For a moment she wonders where the rest of her clothes are but the thought is fleeting as another wave of dizzy hangover makes her sit heavily on the tub's edge in her towel. Her body hurts. Her soul hurts. 

"Good, you're out," Bodhi says as he opens the door and looks down at her with an understanding gaze. He'd seen this before, too many times to reasonably count, and she hated that he was always willing to pick her up off the ground. What had she done to deserve someone like Bodhi? She wasn’t a good person. She wasn’t someone who deserved to be saved. 

"She decent?" Another voice behind him asks, out of sight. Jyn tenses as Bodhi throws a look over his shoulder. 

"Decent enough compared to what you've already seen," he replies and the footsteps get closer. A man pokes his head around the door and Jyn looks wearily at him, trying to measure him up despite the headache that sprouts at the effort. 

"Jyn, how're you feeling?" He asks carefully, stepping past Bodhi and kneeling down before her. He reaches out a fist and unfurls it, a few Advil in his palm and a bottle of Gatorade in the other.

"Who are you?" Jyn croaks, taking the offerings with the slightest hesitation. Her joints were stiff and her back screamed at her with the small movement. 

"I'm Luke, Bodhi's… Friend. We met last night when you showed up on his doorstep and proceeded to pass out after emptying the contents of your stomach on our shrubs," he answers with a hint of subdued laughter. Beside him Jyn watches Bodhi shift uneasily, the nerves obvious.

Bodhi's 'friend'. Jyn wasn't stupid, she just hadn't put two and two together before but it made sense. Maybe that's why she'd always felt comfortable with the man - he never asked of her more than she could give. Neither had Cassian but - 

No. She had to stop this. She had to forget him. It'd been two months since she'd run and she couldn't look back. She'd been drowning since then but so what? There were no backwards routes in this life, she had to keep going forward and that meant leaving him and everything he offered behind. 

It just hurt so much to keep moving forward. 

"Bodhi wasn't here when you got here so I brought you in and put you in bed. Do you remember anything from last night?" Luke continues. Jyn shakes her head and regrets it immediately. "Not surprising. You had a lot to drink, probably. But you seemed pretty hurt and upset and were quite adamant that you wanted to get sober. Told me to make sure you got into a program in the morning so that you could start fresh."

"Do you remember that Jyn?" Bodhi asks, his brow raised. Almost as if he didn't believe it himself. She certainly didn't but what was she going to say? She had nothing else to cling to, if she didn't start to get clean now she'd end up dead sooner rather than later and she'd become just another statistic of the lost kids spit out of the foster system.

"Not really, but if you're offering…" She answers softly. Bodhi's look flickers with surprise before he comes closer and crouches next to Luke, almost tentative in his approach.

"If you want this - if you're serious - we'll drive you today. We know a place - it got Luke's brother-in-law cleaned up so it's pretty much a miracle facility. It's near the coast and they'll help you," Bodhi urges quickly, worried that if he spoke too slowly she would surely change her mind before he finished getting the words out. He looks almost hopeful as he reaches for her hand and squeezes it, the move making her pause because she doesn't know quite what to do with it. 

She didn’t deserve this… Right? She didn’t deserve Bodhi’s help, or Luke’s - all she’d done since coming back was make it difficult to be around her. She’d thwarted Bodhi’s kindness, had abused his willingness to look the other way, and still he was stretching out a helping hand and her instinct was to bite it. 

"I don't have the money for a real place, Bodes," she admits carefully, her gaze on the floor. She couldn’t tell them no, not with their hopes so high, but the logistics of it seemed impossible now too. How could she tell them she'd spent all of her contract money on just staying afloat? The drinking had only been a way to forget the fact that her bills were starting to pile up again and she was struggling to find new work that accommodated her scattered mind and sleepless hours.

"Don't worry about that," Luke interjects as Bodhi starts to flounder with how to answer. Jyn watches as her friend turns to his partner, eyes wide in shock.

"Luke - "

"I can't let you do that," Jyn states over Bodhi's protest. She needed help, yes, but this was far too much. She would never be able to repay this debt and she wasn’t worth the cost. She’d probably fuck it up anyways and get kicked out and then she’d really be up shit creek.

"Yes, you can. If I can't help my friend, then what good is the money I have?" Luke questions. Jyn closes her eyes and sighs, covering her face with her hands.

Was she really going to do this? Go to a detox centre and let someone else foot the bill? She'd worked so hard to become independent but now she was back where she'd started, on her own but needing to be bailed out by someone once again because she couldn’t get her shit together. If she took out all of the self-directed anger, if she truly was being honest with herself, she didn't really have a choice. Cassian had been right all those months ago - her drinking was out of control and she couldn't get clean alone. She had to get help before it killed her.

"How long do I have to stay if I go?" She asks from behind her hands, her voice barely a whisper. 

"Ninety days, unless you decide to stay longer for whatever reason. If we take you today they've got an opening and we can get you in. But it's gotta be today," Bodhi answers evenly, a hint of disbelief in his voice that almost makes her laugh. Had she really become that unreliable? Had she really sunk low enough to not garner some sense of trust from her friend? 

Bodhi had been the one to convince her to join the Alliance all those months ago, his selling her the idea of giving back making her pause in a life where she didn't know what would come next. He'd been on missions before, had explained how they'd helped him right himself when he'd felt lost, and she'd foolishly thought they would be her salvation. She'd become dedicated to the training, scouring the opportunities for one that felt right and when Scarif had come up she'd jumped on it like a child excited by ice cream. She'd thought it was going to right things for her, to put her on a path to success, but she'd only come home more broken than when she'd left and she didn't know what to do with that. Her hope was tarnished, raw, and she was back at square one.

"Will you come visit?" Her words are almost foreign to her own ears, their broken lilt filled with pain ready to spill out of her. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. She couldn’t believe it had gotten to this point. 

"When you're allowed visitors we'll be the first ones there," Luke assures and rests a hand on her knee. "Do you want Bodhi to get some things from your place? Or do you want to go there first?"

"I think I need to get some of my stuff and close up my apartment. Can we go there and then straight to the facility? I don't want to go alone because I'll probably chicken out but - " 

"Of course we're going with you. Get dressed and we'll go," Bodhi says and gets to his feet, his hands twisting nervously as he avoids eye contact. The two men leave her to get dressed, their subtle glances to one another not subtle at all.

Jyn sits on the edge of the tub for a little while longer, her head pounding and her nerves frayed. She couldn't believe this was happening, that she'd agreed to go to rehab today. It hadn't even been an option yesterday - she'd still been so confident that she had it under control and she could stop whenever she wanted. But not remembering last night, not knowing what had happened to make her finally crack or where the bruises had come from made the flags in her mind pop up like bright warnings. How many nights had she had like that? Where she didn't remember who she was with or what she'd done? It couldn't be good, regardless of the number - she needed to get better.

"Fuck," she murmurs and gets to her feet, slowly getting dressed and tying her damp hair back from her face. She dons her mental armour and steps out of the bathroom, ready to finally face this head on.

* * *

The first week at the centre is the loneliest week she can remember. Her assigned therapist, Chirrut, doesn't approve her visitor log until day seven with the explicit note that he wants to approve her visitors individually. She thinks it's overkill but maybe it's good that someone is looking out for her, especially when she can't seem to look out for herself.

When Bodhi arrives on day ten she asks him to break her out. When he comes with Luke two weeks later she doesn't ask again and he doesn't offer. By day 32 she's found her rhythm, her attention steadying as the alcohol finally leaves her system. She feels ten times lighter and she's dropped five pounds, her time in the boxing gym helping her re-establish her mobility and get back to the body she was used to before Scarif. She feels better, physically, but her pain still flares up worse at night. Those are the times she wishes she had her phone, that she could message Cassian and tell him all of the things she'd kept locked behind her lips since she met him.

She’d never told him what happened to her growing up. Sure, he’d known she was in the system, that it hadn’t been kind to her, but she hadn’t gone into the punishments she’d endured or the hands that had taken things from her against her will. In all honesty she had barely told anyone about what had happened to her growing up, at least until Chirrut stared her down with his unseeing eyes. She hadn’t mentioned any of it and maybe that’s why she’d let it get this far - she’d only known the pain of things and the comfort Cassian offered was too unfamiliar to trust. At night now it was all Jyn could do to stop herself from sneaking her way into an office and calling him, confessing everything in one fell swoop. 

He deserved to know why she’d run, didn’t he? 

When she brings it up, Chirrut tells her not to get lost in the worry of it. Baze, his partner and co-owner of the centre, reminds her not to think of Cassian's face when she's landing her punches.

Both men somehow know from what she’s mentioned of him in her sessions that whatever edge she's tripped over since coming home, Cassian's likely tripped over it too and they’re not willing to turn him into the villain she needs to push out of her life to move on. They're focused on getting  _ her _ better, not her relationships, and she only starts to see that after day 57.

"But how am I supposed to help him if I'm sober and he's not? How do I keep from falling back into that?" She asks breathlessly, dropping her hands and grabbing the punching bag she's been hitting for the last thirty minutes. Baze steps around the bag and looks at her head on, his gaze measuring.

"Some people want to get better and some don't. If he is of the latter group then you need to determine whether you trust yourself enough to let him go, little sister," he answers as she brushes her bangs back from her face. "Do you want to move forward, after all of this?"

"Yes. You know I do. But I don't know if I can if he's still hurting. Don't I owe him to help him get right? We were a team in Scarif and he's doing this on his own - shouldn't I be helping him?" 

"Do you think that's fair, gambling with putting yourself at risk if someone isn't ready? Would you do this all again just because they dragged you back down to where you were a few weeks ago?"

Baze's question makes her pause, her brow furrowed as she looks at her shoes. He was right - she didn't want to do this again if talking to Cassian made her relapse. But she hated the idea of him being left behind - it made her sick. 

The memory of him curled up at the side of the bed, his usually long frame looking so small compared to the strength and confidence that he'd stood with when he'd met her that first time all those months ago in Scarif. It had made her stomach churn to walk out that door knowing the shadow of the person she was leaving behind. He wasn't Cassian anymore, he was a stranger inhabiting Cassian's body.

It had taken her half of her time at the centre to realize that losing Tivik had broken them both in different ways. For her, the rupture had come with the hand colliding with her cheek and the memory of the warm liquid spattering on her face. For Cassian, she wasn't quite sure what the point of no return had been but she thought maybe it had something to do with the idea of losing one of his own, of fighting so hard to keep them safe that when Tivik was lost he was too. 

"I don't want to relapse but I don't want him to be left behind either," she answers truthfully to Baze's understanding nod. "You know, the night I left he was trying to talk me into getting sober, right?"

"And what did you say?" He counters, always turning the statements back on her. On her decisions, her actions that had brought her to this place. 

"I don't…" She pauses, her teeth biting into the skin of her cheek. Baze simply watches with that steady gaze that pulls her secrets from her chest. "I told him I thought we should have another drink, fuck, and then forget about it."

"How did that go?" 

The memory makes her almost want to recoil as she thinks of it. 

All this time, all Jyn could really remember clearly from that night was getting up, looking back at the bed with him in it, and then getting her stuff and running. But that hadn't been all of it - not nearly all of it.

She remembers his hand between her legs. The flash of his fingers on her and then a warm cloth. Somewhere in the haze her nails are scraping at metal and her cheek is rubbing against something cold. There's a tug on her shoulder and teeth on her neck and she remembers it all - the way she'd gone slack, how he'd carried her and held her like he was sorry. How her mind had been filled with another memory, one from childhood where she'd had to claw her way out from the depths of painful darkness, the echo of it pulling her down until she was drowning in it.

That night it hadn't been _ him _ that had hurt her, it had been her past rearing its ugly head and he just hadn't noticed he'd triggered it. He'd been too intoxicated to see the pain flickering in her submission, too damaged to understand her silence and so she hadn't told him why she'd left, hadn't even contacted him since, and maybe this was why he hadn't tried to contact her either. Maybe he'd known she was irreparable. Or that when drinking together they were fire and ice and one of them was bound to be destroyed by the other.

"Not well," she responds eventually, coming back to the present and stepping back from the bag once more. "But all I can do is trust the force, right?" 

Baze smiles easily and nods, grabbing the bag to steady it as she starts punching it again.  _ Trust the force _ , Chirrut was always saying, like the force was anything but part of his mantra meditation placebo bullshit. 

* * *

"I want to ask about Cassian," Jyn says as soon as Bodhi sits down across from her, his eyes widening for a second before he schools his expression back into one of indifference. She's thankful he's come alone this week so she could have this conversation without embarrassing herself even more than she already had.

"Is that really the best use of our time?" Bodhi counters evenly.

"It's what I want to talk about. I think it's important that I figure out some of the missing pieces and you might have them," she adds carefully. Bodhi nods briskly and twists his hands together, nerves belying the calm mask he wears. "Do you know how he is?"

"Jyn..." His voice is low, warning. He didn't want to put his foot in something, that much was obvious.

"Fine. Only historical inquiries then. Was he still alive when I came here?"

"Yes."

"At that time, I hadn't heard from him since I left him. Did he ever tell you why he never reached out?"

"He did try. To reach you, I mean," Bodhi admits quietly, shoulders hunched. Where before Jyn might have spun out with that realization, she now only felt a ribbon of hurt at the thought that she’d been denied the opportunity to fix things.

As if she could have fixed anything in her life before she came to the centre. 

"How?" Her voice breaks and dammit she hates that. She wanted to be tough, hardened, but the thought of Cassian trying to reach her almost makes her heart stop it's chaotic beat.

"He called your phone once while you were passed out at my place. I answered and said you were okay and that you needed time to get right. I didn't mean to get in between you two but I could tell you need a break from it but wouldn't ever say it and so - "

"It's okay Bodhi," Jyn assures as his words turn rambling, her hand reaching out to rest on his knee.

"I know he means a lot to you, Jyn - he means a lot to me too - but it wasn't good, what the two of you had. Maybe if, if Scarif hadn't gone like it had. Or you met him somewhere else or he was getting help too, I don't know. Maybe it could work out. But I needed to protect you because I know you and I know you can get right if you just get a bit of help. I couldn't lose anyone else and you were so close to losing yourself that I couldn't - Jyn, I'm sorry, I didn't want you to die too."

"Bodes," Jyn sighs, squeezing his knee. "I didn't want to die either so I'm glad you did that for me even if I wasn't thankful at the time. I wouldn't have been able to do it, I don't think. But now I need to stand on my own again and part of that, I'm realizing, is figuring out how I'm going to do it knowing he's still out there struggling. Have you seen him lately?"

"At the office, sometimes. He comes in to work on projects for us. He looks rough but he's never drunk when I see him."

"No, he wouldn't be, would he?" She adds to accompany his sigh.

"For as long as I've known him, Cassian has been dedicated to keeping the cause moving forward. He's always been out on mission, going to one place and then onto to next. But he hasn't been out since Scarif and I think you know as well as I do what that means for someone like him. He's hurting, Jyn, he is. But it's not on you to fix him."

"I know." Her words sound foreign in her ears. She'd known this already and yet still, hearing it from Bodhi made it seem more real somehow.

"Anyways. How about we talk about Luke's sister getting knocked up? I'm sure you'll find this story hilarious for a change."

* * *

One-hundred and seven days later, Jyn leaves the Guardian facility with a clearer mind and a steadier hand. She doesn't crave a drink and when she starts her first contract since getting clean she doesn't feel like she's a failure who's out of her depth. 

Bodhi and Luke are there to pick her up and take her back to her tidied apartment, the alcohol stripped from all her hiding places, like expert hands had weaved through her existence and polished her up.

"You guys do this?" Jyn asks as she returns to the kitchen from her bedroom, a towel folded into a bird held in her palms.

"Nope. You can thank Kes for that," Luke replies with a laugh. 

"Shara's Kes?" Bodhi nods, looking between them. "I didn't realize they cared."

"They do. Shara has had her own issues coming home but when she heard you were getting help she wanted to do something to support you. I told her your apartment could use a feminine touch," Bodhi jokes. Jyn throws the towel at him before cracking and pulling him into her arms.

"Thank you Bodhi, Luke. I owe you my life," she whispers, her chest aching with the truth. She'd probably be in a ditch right now without them and that thought scared her to be better even if it was the harder choice.

"You don't but if you ever want to take us out for dinner, we won't say no," Bodhi answers as he pulls back. "Now. We're going to take off and let you settle back in. You've got a meeting tomorrow and Thursday but if you need anything before then - "

"I'll be okay," she interjects, hoping,  _ praying _ , it was true.

She could do this. She could. She just had to figure out how to get through the first night on her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've just started the last chapter on this beast, currently sitting around 48k words. Thank ya'll so much for reading and I think now I'll be able to increase the posting frequency to start getting other pieces out into the world soon. If you're alive and reading, feel free to let me know you're out there - I'm on Tumblr (lollercakesff)or chillin' here. Much love to you for reading <3


	7. TEN MONTHS POST

_ Cassian _

The nightmares keep him up at night, restless and weary. He tries to shut them out, to numb them with a prescription from a walk-in clinic but all it does is trap him once he's down, locking him in the dream until he sees it all over again. When he wakes, torn finally free from the jungle, he finds himself covered in a thin layer of sweat, hair stuck to his forehead and fists tangled in the sheets. He's glad Jyn isn't there to see him anymore, to witness the fear that clouds his mind in the aftershocks and hear the screams that occasionally turn his throat raw.

Those are the nights when he wishes he was back in Scarif, on his knees in Tivik's place. 

_ Take me as payment instead.  _

He wishes they had. Maybe it would have been better. For him, at least, and maybe Jyn. Not for the cause or for the rest of his team - the ones who hadn't been dragged down with his spiral since coming home. Especially not for the organization that had invested in him for all these years. He had to keep pushing for them, to prove that he wasn't a waste. And he'd promised he'd pull it together after the incident on the pier but it had only fallen more terribly apart since then. 

Jyn had left. He hadn't been mad that she'd left - how could he be? But to say he hadn't worried about her every day since that morning would be a lie. She hadn't called, wouldn't answer any of the few messages he sent, and it wasn't until Cassian finally got up the courage to call her one day that he finally got through. 

But it hadn't been Jyn on the line - Bodhi had picked up instead and his usual soft-spoken-self had proceeded to rip into Cassian for the state Bodhi had found her in. The man had demanded Cassian give her space and he had obliged - convincing himself it was easy because all he'd ever wanted to know was if she was still alive (since wasn't the alternative the most terrifying possibility he could think of after everything he'd seen?)

That call had put a mental wall up between them that he refused to break. No matter how much he was hurting, no matter how badly he needed someone who understood, he wouldn't - couldn't - reach out and ruin this for her. She deserved to get better and he wanted her to, if only because he needed her to survive even if that meant he didn't. He just needed to figure out what came next without her.

But dammit it was hard to keep going. His last mission had broken everything he'd thought he'd known and now he was trying to put it back together with tape and glue. When the opportunity had come up to go back to the field he'd initially hesitated. Was he ready to do this again? Could he afford not to do the one thing he'd been good at his whole life? He knew he had to at least try. Maybe going back out was the key he'd been ignoring all these months and if it wasn't… Well, at least he'd know he needed to find a quicker way out of this suffering.

Now Cassian sits in the conference room at HQ awaiting his briefing, gear packed and tucked in the corner with his laptop open to a security document he still had to read through.

"Sorry I'm late," the nurse says as she sits with a huff in the seat across from him. She flips open his personnel folder and reads his file quickly before turning to look at him with a steady gaze. "This is your first mission since the incident in Scarif. How are you feeling?"

He'd prepared for this. Had readied a script in his head, one that would get him cleared without any issue so he could return to the field where he belonged. Since Jyn had left he'd started to think he no longer belonged back home - it was too claustrophobic, too regimented and bright without her. He needed the quiet of a stark night where the sounds of life were the only things clicking and humming in the air. His apartment caged him and the city closed in so tightly he felt like he was being choked, every man in uniform making him remember the child with the gun. 

_ Children with guns. In forests and schools. Was there a difference between here and there?  _

"I'm good. It was stressful at the time but I think I've had enough of a break - I'm ready to get back out there. It's a different context too, so that helps," he admits as she leans forward to look at him, to measure him.

"I see. Are you hoping that the desert climate changes things?" She asks thoughtfully. He knows what she's trying to do - to tease his vulnerabilities out into the open - but he isn't going to play into her hand.

He was ready to do this. He _ had _ to do this. There were people out there that needed his help and sitting at home was not doing him - or them - any favours. He'd done the research - he'd get his own room on the ground so he didn’t have to share accommodations with anyone which meant his issues sleeping wouldn’t be a problem. The team he’d work with was small and the conflict was far removed from where they would be operating so it wouldn’t feel like it was pressing in on him every day. It was the perfect return mission for him to ease back into things. 

"It doesn't need to. I'm really okay. I've got all my resources handy, I've been active and keeping up with the program changes and my medical is fully cleared. I'm all set," he assures with a smile. The mask he wears is tight, barely creasing at his eyes, and the stretch of its use feels almost foreign. 

"Alright then. Let's go over the country risks and get through any questions you have," she instructs and writes a quick note before handing him a sheet with the country profile.

The rest of his briefings go off without a hitch, his technical meetings and finance run-throughs easier than he’d expected. By the time the afternoon rolls around he's ready to head to the airport, his final questions being answered by the assigned aide before he calls his cab. 

“So you’re looking for your confirmed pickup contact,” a familiar voice greets, catching his attention as he digs through his gear one last time. 

“Bodhi?” Cassian says lowly, turning to look at the man with trepidation.

“The one and only,” Bodhi answers dryly. Cassian tries to smile, forces his lips to twist into some resemblance of happiness, as he looks at the man standing in the doorway. He should hug him, right? Or - make any attempt at bridging the almost year long gap between when he'd seen him last? 

Jyn had always been the better one to keep in contact with Shara and Bodhi. He'd thought about it, had dialed the number once or twice, but anytime the line had rung he'd chickened out and hung up. Especially since their last conversation, where he’d effectively been told to piss off. Sure, Cassian was still bleeding from the memories but he refused to spread that blood around onto hands otherwise clean. 

He didn't want to drag them down with him - not if he could avoid it - and so Jyn had been the only one to get caught up in his mess because she refused to let their connection go.

“I hear you’re heading out tonight,” Bodhi starts, pauses as he watches Cassian stand up to his full height and rest his hands on his hips. 

“Yep. Flight’s at seven. Are you on the rotation?” 

Bodhi shakes his head and looks out into the hallway before stepping into the room fully and closing the door. He sits in one of the chairs and Cassian follows, taking the man’s cues. “Haven’t been out since the last one. Never really got right after what we saw out there so they’ve found a place for me here and it’s good - it pays the bills and still helps the cause. How have you been… since everything? Have you been seeing anyone?” 

Cassian shifts uneasily, his chest tightening. Was he seeing anyone? Was Bodhi asking if he'd replaced Jyn? Like she was a toy he could trade in? Like he didn't still long for her every fucking night?

"I don't…" Cassian answers and looks at the floor, words stuck in his throat.

"Shit - No, I mean, like a therapist. Just someone to talk to," Bodhi urges, leaning towards him with his hands flickering nervously in front of him. "Not… not like _ that _ . I wouldn't ask you about that."

Cassian tries not to read too much into his reassurance, the subtext more painful than he would admit. "Oh," he sputters in reply, a quick shake of his head.

"Cassian," Bodhi sighs, getting to his feet slowly. "I told myself I wasn't going to get involved and I'm not. But I've been worried about you, just like I was worried about Jyn. I know you guys - I mean, I know it was complicated, but I want to make sure you're going to be okay out there? That this isn't some kind of self-flagellation for you?"

“I mean, it’s going to be a tough mission but I’ve got it under control,” he lies and it’s a wonder his nose doesn’t grow like Pinocchio. 

“Really?” Bodhi presses and the man’s eyes flash, knowing, seeing his mask falter. 

“I’ll be okay out there, Rook. I just need to get back into the swing of things and it’ll work out.” 

Silence draws out between them and Cassian shifts in his seat, the man’s gaze unwavering. 

Before, when they’d played games late into the night with beers and bartered items from the market, Cassian had once told Bodhi of how he’d used to play chicken with trucks on the interstate near his house. He’d claimed his poker face was fail-proof, that his father had taught him how to make a man give you what you wanted without giving an inch. Bodhi had thought he was joking at the time, had made light of what his friend was saying, but sitting here across from Cassian it became clear that the man hadn’t been kidding at all. There was something in Cassian’s dark eyes that made you want to give in to whatever he was asking without words, your ability to abstain disappearing under his unwavering gaze. 

Bodhi couldn’t hold out. He had always been softer, more sympathetic to the cause and the people it helped. Now Cassian realized he was using that sympathy to his own advantage and the thought made him swallow back the bile that rose in his throat. 

“If you have any issues, contact me first, alright?” Bodhi says eventually, getting to his feet. Cassian follows, reaching for the man’s hand to give him a shake. “Don’t push yourself under, Andor. The cause won’t advance if it takes your life too. Remember that.” 

"Thanks," he pauses, his throat tightening. He wanted to ask,  _ needed _ to ask. "How is she?" The question spills from him before he can stop it, his hands clenching and trying to expel the nervous energy that sizzles down his limbs.

"You know I can't - "

"I know. I know I shouldn't - I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, it's just - fuck, never mind - "

"She's getting help, okay? I can't tell you - "

"That's more than enough," Cassian interrupts, his voice higher than usual and his palms sweating. He'd known better than to ask Bodhi for intel on Jyn - he'd  _ known  _ \- but it hadn't stopped him. He was desperate to know how she was doing, if she'd survived him, if she'd found someone else who wouldn't hurt her like he had.

"Take care of yourself, Captain," Bodhi says gently and claps him on the shoulder before eventually leaving the room.

The assurance that she was fine follows him to the airport, settling in his gut as he checks his bags and sits at the counter of the bar to try to forget why the sinking feeling from the conversation managed to drag him so deep. He doesn't order anything because he's trying so damn hard to drink less but the desire to just slam a couple triples to forget the whole exchange becomes almost overwhelming.

He's thankful when they call his flight and he finally manages to tear himself away from the temptation. Where he was going the alcohol was forbidden and it was another saving grace he could hold onto while he was out there - he couldn't drink if the import didn't exist, right? Maybe he'd come back without needing to rely on the crutch of a drunken haze to get through the day. 

But probably not.

* * *

A week passes in the field and it's almost okay. The sheer emptiness of their duty station lends him a strange semblance of comfort, its remote location and minimal supplies are almost a relief as he disconnects from the life he needed to leave behind. He loses himself in the work, networking with contacts and catching up on all of the operational details that HQ hadn't been able to provide. It's only after the handover is complete that he starts to feel uneasy again, his anxious habits resurfacing with the responsibility for his team and everything that came with it.

The first convoy to miss their scheduled return seemingly sets off a domino effect in his subconscious - or at least that's what he'll tell himself later, when it's all said and done.

"Where are they, Shivan?" He growls after the first half hour, his radio operator staring at him with confusion.

"They've probably just hit a delay," she replies softly, watching him pace the small space.

"Can you contact them again? Tell them to check in immediately."

"I can try, but we both know the cell reception is spotty and the frequencies have a difficult time connecting at this range. Did you want to try the satellite phone? Though normally protocol gives them an hour before - "

"They could be dead within an hour,  _ tonta _ ," Cassian snaps as he turns towards his makeshift office and grabs for the phone. He's halfway through dialing the number for the group when an engine rattles into the compound.

"They're back, Captain," Shivan announces and when Cassian stops and looks up at her he can tell she sees right through his facade.

He was not alright. Not alright at all.

By week three the team is ready to call a mutiny and he can feel it. Tension is nearly unbearable as he raises security restrictions and field trips are minimized almost to the point of impossibility. He doesn't see it though as anything but precautions - they were in hostile territory, weren't they? How else could he ensure nobody would get killed under his watch? How could he stand by if another of his team members was slaughtered while he did nothing to prevent it?

Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the aching in his shoulders. Perhaps it was the taste of iron that would never leave his mouth. Nothing felt right and he couldn't figure out  _ why _ HQ was calling him to check in almost daily.

At least, he couldn't figure it out until a replacement was sent in early, a sturdy woman with frazzled greying hair and a mask of steel. She wasn't alone. 

On her flight, direct from HQ, was a wrangler whose only task was to bring him home. He'd known as soon as fleet had been dispatched to pick them up from the airport - two individuals, not one. He'd only seen it happen once before and that time he'd been the one to call them. The worker had gone rogue, dealing in the black market for supplies, and he'd had no choice but to pull them from the mission early. 

The wrangler though was here for  _ him _ this time. To get him home immediately, before he could sink the mission any further than he already had.

"Cassian Andor?" The man asks as he stands in the hallway outside Cassian’s door. Cassian nods and turns, heading deeper into his room with an open invitation left at the entrance. "My name is Baze Malbus - "

"I know who you are," Cassian grumbles, dropping two ice cubes into his drink. He wished it was something harder than the soda water the hotel offered as a 'perk'.

"Good, then we'll make this easy. We've had to change your flights. We head out tomorrow at 0800. Do you have any questions?" Baze states evenly. The man’s too-tall frame almost overshadows Cassian as Baze’s wide shoulders block out the light from his desk lamp.

"Are they kicking me out for good?" Cassian asks after a moment, sitting heavily on his bed and staring at the floor. The cold glass bites into his fingers and he feels the defeat roll over him in a heavy wave though he can't deny the niggling relief that pings at the back of his mind too - one that reminded him that nobody had died under his watch this time.

"I don't have those details. I'm here as a health support until you're back stateside - "

"Is that what they're calling it now?" Cassian snaps, his fingers clenching around the glass as he swirls the ice. 

"My only intention is to see you home safely. I've no other mission requirements," Baze continues thoughtfully, though his posture makes him seem more imposing than his words. 

"They think I'm going to off myself now that they're kicking me out of the mission. You know that, right? That's why you're here?"

"Are you? Going to kill yourself?" Baze counters bluntly and Cassian laughs, bitterness in his throat as he holds the cold glass to his forehead. The man doesn’t laugh, instead his eyes watch him shift, trained on his expression as it cracks under his questioning. 

"It wouldn't help. It wouldn't mean anything to the cause, or the people around me. I'm expendable. I'm not even worth the trouble," he whispers so quietly that a pin dropping would seem to shatter the silence. 

_ Take me as payment instead. _

It should have been him that day on the road, punished for not speaking when he should have. For not keeping control of the situation and letting it unravel before him. A man had  _ died _ because he had failed and now he was back in the field, ruining the operation he was meant to fix. 

He should have just given up that day at the beach. Or that day after Jyn left, when he'd climbed to the edge of his balcony and sat on the crossbar until he heard Kay's key in the lock. He should have given up so many times before because making it through was somehow only getting worse with every day that passed. 

* * *

“How has your adjustment home been going?” Kay asks, standing stock still in Cassian’s apartment like a robot evaluating a new environment. The man had been over almost daily since his return, his presence in the apartment now somewhat of a fixture as Cassian went through his daily activities. Activities which consisted of sitting on his couch, staring at his ceiling, and not going to the therapy sessions that he had been ordered to attend to receive his medical clearance again. 

Cassian couldn’t hate his friend for being so imposing but he was pretty sure the Alliance had roped him into monitoring him since his return, adding wellness checks onto the man’s already full analytics role. He was trying not to be upset about it but sometimes he just needed a bit of peace and that hadn’t happened since the man had met him as he’d come through the arrivals area at the airport, kicked out of the mission early and escorted home by a burly man who barely talked. 

“It’s fine, Kay,” Cassian responds lowly, opening his fridge to do something to distract himself. It wasn’t like he intended on eating - he hadn’t been hungry for weeks - and he hadn’t given in yet to that craving to just stock up at the liquor store and lose himself once again. 

It’d been a month since he was pulled out of the field. One whole month of trying to find his footing in the city now that he knew he was likely back here for good. They’d never let someone like him go back out there - it would be a disaster - but they also refused to just let him wallow in that realization. He’d been set up with a wellness plan through some rehab centre, Baze as his case manager and requirements to attend counselling sessions through their group therapy program. The requirements were there, they argued, to help him recover and get back to the field. 

They didn’t want to lose an asset they’d invested so heavily in, one program officer had told him during a debrief. He’d tried not to feel like a wasted commodity as they spoke about how it was unfortunate they’d used up so much money to train him - he tried, but he couldn’t help it. 

“The chances of a full recovery from a traumatic experience are not particularly high, Cassian, but they worsen over time if left untreated,” Kay states coldly. Cassian’s eyes close as the cool air from the fridge surrounds him, leaving a chill running down his spine. Kay still hadn't gotten over the fact that Cassian hadn't told him the details about Scarif until he was already neck deep in his PTSD. 

“Then perhaps they should have dealt with it  _ before _ ,” Cassian snaps and lets the door close. He stalks around the kitchen island and into his room, Kay following him blindly. “ _ Chingados _ , what? Do you think I’m going to kill myself while you’re here in my apartment? Do you think I’m that desperate?” 

“I think you’re entirely that desperate, based on the observations of your apartment’s current state. Have you reconnected with anyone other than me since your return?” He changes the subject and Cassian wants to disappear at the suggestion. 

Reconnected? As though his social base wasn’t decimated before he left on his first mission all those years ago. Dead parents, estranged family. Friends he had barely talked to in almost a year. There was Jyn, but he’d ruined that like he managed to burn everything good to the ground around himself.

“I’m assuming by your silence that your answer is a negative one. That is unfortunate but not irreparable - I’ll add it to the list of things we need to address. In the meantime, I’ve got an additional task for you to complete. Headquarters has requested I deliver you to your next counselling session, to ensure your attendance,” he pauses and Cassian groans, sitting on the edge of his bed and staring at his floor. “The session is this afternoon. You may wish to wear something more appropriate for a public environment.” 

“So I can sit in a room with a guy who will pretend to understand?” Cassian grumbles into his palms. 

“It’s group therapy. Other people will be in attendance which is what requires a shirt and shoes,” Kay counters and Cassian feels the clothes hit his face before he realizes the man is going through his drawers. “I’ll wait in the kitchen for you. You have one hour.” 

The man leaves the room and closes the door quietly behind himself, leaving Cassian to sit in the heavy silence. He didn’t  _ want _ to go to therapy, let alone group therapy. Nobody they could put him in front of would understand what he’d seen in the years he’d been in this business. They couldn’t fathom the suffering he’d witnessed, the fights and desperate struggles to live after the worst catastrophes the world could throw at them. He’d seen children starving, women trading themselves for rations. He’d watched little boys with guns bigger than themselves drag a body to the side of the road. 

“Forty-five minutes, Cassian,” Kay calls through the door. 

Reluctantly, Cassian gets to his feet and moves down the hall to his bathroom. He turns the water on cold and climbs in, punishing himself under the spray as his skin turns icy under the stream. He needed to numb himself before he went to this - there was no other way he’d get through it. 

By the time they arrive at the church basement where the session is being held it’s nearly quarter-past, the meeting already in progress beyond the double doors. 

“Guess I’ll have to catch it next week,” Cassian grumbles as Kay looks at him from the entryway. 

“Chirrut is already aware of your reluctance and has advised me that you are welcome at any point during the meeting. I will wait here until after your meeting is complete.” 

Cassian looks to Kay and then slides his mask into place, the neutral look coming over his expression as he turns back to face the room. He would go to this thing, listen numbly to the stories, and then get out of there as fast as he could. He wouldn’t share - they wouldn’t understand anyways - and he wouldn’t come back. Maybe he’d move. Pickup and leave this city that made him feel trapped, abandon the cause once and for all and find somewhere else to disappear. 

“Ah, please have a seat Cassian,” a voice, likely Chirrut, from the group says, a hand outstretched into the air and beckoning him forward. Cassian tries not to let the surprise break through his calm demeanor, his feet carrying him across the open space and into a folding chair as he pointedly ignores the whitened eyes of his perceptive group leader. “Martha, please continue your share,” Chirrut instructs softly and waves to a girl across the circle. 

Cassian leans his elbows against his knees and tries to avoid eye contact, the stories from Martha and the others mere background noise to the roaring in his head. He doesn’t want to listen. He doesn’t want to be here. He just wanted… He didn’t know what he wanted. 

“Would anyone else like to share something? Perhaps you, Jyn?” Chirrut says eventually when the silence spreads through the room. Cassian frowns at the name, his heart stalling. Jyn? It couldn’t be… 

She scowls back at him as his eyes land on hers, her brow tight as she chews the inside of her cheek. What was she doing here? Of all places - he’d thought here he would surely be unknown. But she was here and Chirrut knew her which meant she had to have been coming for some time and - 

“I don’t want to discuss it today,” she spits with a huff of breath, her high pitched voice false in his ears. She hadn’t sounded like that when they’d been together before, her low voice softer than the performative one she used here. 

“Interesting. It’s unusual that you are reluctant today when we had such a breakthrough last week. Perhaps we can address the reluctance rather than your experience?” Chirrut asks evenly, his attention focused on her as Cassian shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He shouldn't _ be here _ . He shouldn’t be making this harder for her. He’d already done enough harm, hadn’t he?

“I would prefer the fuck not to share today, okay? Can’t that be enough?” Jyn grumbles and he thinks ‘ _ oh, there she is _ ’ as her voice drops and she crosses her arms over her chest, closing herself off. 

He missed her. It was a desperate, painful ache to recognize and he wished he didn't. It had become easier to live as though he had no one to think about, to worry about, but here she was and she looked well and he both loved and hated that she was getting help and doing so well without him. She looked like she was thriving while he had to argue about putting on clean clothes to come to this and it just made it all the more obvious why he didn’t deserve her, couldn’t even think of dragging her back down with him. 

“Thank you, Jyn. We can discuss this after class, if you’d like. Cassian, perhaps you would like to share what’s brought you to us?” If Cassian was a betting man he would put money on the fact that Chirrut was psychic, the perceptiveness in his deflection almost impossible to get without dumb luck or supernatural powers. Somehow he'd known the conflict between his two patients without seeing the looks on either of their faces and it had to be wizardry, it just had to be.

“Do I have to?” Cassian responds evenly, his tone belying the nerves in his gut that Jyn’s words have caused in him. He didn't want to share - he wanted to corner Jyn and make her wrap her arms around him and hold him until the pain stopped. 

“It is expected of newcomers to share on their first visit to create a sense of camaraderie with their fellow group mates, yes,” Chirrut responds and his foggy eyes land on him, the strange feeling of being  _ seen _ for the first time in months breaking through his shell. Cassian shifts and rubs a hand over his face before looking at the floor and shrugging his shoulders. 

“Fine. I went on an aid mission and it went to shit. Someone got killed and I should have stopped it but I didn’t. I should have but I was too late. It just got so out of control so quickly and there was nothing - and now since I’ve come back home it feels like I’ve never left - I can’t get through a night without remembering everything that went wrong and replaying it over and over like a record. I can’t keep my days straight and I can’t focus on anything but that mission even though I’ve tried to just push through and force myself to concentrate on something else. 

“I’m here now because I accepted a mission to go back into the field a few weeks ago but apparently couldn’t hack it and had to be brought back in like a loose dog needing to be put on a leash. Now my employers have forced me to come to try to salvage their investment or something,” he pauses and looks to Jyn whose own gaze is trained on her boots, avoiding him. “It’s a particular waste of time because I don’t know how to connect with anyone anymore, not when it puts them at risk just to know me.”

“How, would you say, does knowing you put someone at risk?” Chirrut asks after a moment, his brows furrowed over his unseeing eyes. 

“I can’t be relied on,” he answers shortly and he sees Jyn look up at him for a second before looking away once more. Did she want him to admit more? Did she want him to talk about the time he'd broken them? How he'd dragged them so far down that she'd had to run away from him and never look back?

“I doubt very much that that is the case, but alas, it is quite a big issue to tackle in the remaining minutes of today’s session. We’ll have to discuss that further next time, should you arrive on time. For now, I'm going to use the last couple minutes to connect with you individually. That’ll be all for today, may the force be with you,” Chirrut adds and taps his knees with his hands. Baze, tucked in the shadows and missed by Cassian at first, stands from the corner of the room and moves towards Chirrut, handing him a walking stick and talking to him in hushed tones as the rest of the class gets to their feet. 

Cassian watches as Jyn bolts up and grabs her bag from the floor, throwing it over her shoulder before stalking towards the door. He follows after her with a clipped pace, stopping the door she attempts to slam behind her with his palm. The impact sings up his arm and he tries not to swear as he steps out into the lobby. 

“How did the session go?” Kay asks from where he stands in the corner. Jyn spares a glance towards the man before shaking her head and disappearing into the washroom. Cassian ignores Kay for the moment and moves to knock on the bathroom door, his hand hovering over the wood for a drawn out moment. “Cassian, it is probably not advised for you to block the women’s washroom like this. I recommend leaving her alone,” Kay says from behind him. Cassian sighs and drops his hand, unwilling to press himself into her life like this. 

He had to remember that it was  _ her _ who’d ghosted him in the middle of the night, not him, and she had a reason for it. He couldn’t force her to interact with him and he wouldn’t try. If she wanted to talk to him, she would. And if she didn't… He didn't want to think about that.

“How long are we going to wait for this girl to relieve herself?” Kay mumbles from behind him. Cassian rolls his eyes and turns towards the man, waving him towards the exit of the church without once looking back. 

He doesn’t see when Jyn opens the door to watch him retreat, her eyes bloodshot and her makeup smudged from unshed tears. Maybe it’s for the best that he doesn’t because if he had seen her watching him retreat out of the building, maybe he would have finally got up the courage to let her be free of him once and for all. 

* * *

There’s a knock on Cassian’s door, pulling him from where he’s sitting in the corner of his balcony. His hands are cold as he flicks the lock and turns on the light overhead, surprise colouring his features as he looks out to see Bodhi standing in his hallway. 

“Can I come in?” The man asks softly, his hair loose from it’s normal tail at the back of his head. He looks rough, like how Cassian looks whenever he finds himself caught in the reflection of a mirror. 

“Sure,” he replies and steps aside, watching as Bodhi moves past the threshold and looks around the space. There’s a drawn moment of silence as he catalogues Cassian’s apartment, his eyes bouncing from one corner to the other before finally landing on Cassian. “What’s up, Bodhi?” 

“I have been sent to discuss something with you but I’m entirely unwilling to do it,” he mumbles in return. His hands dig deeper into his pockets and he looks at the ceiling, huffing out a breath before shaking his head. “I’m not privy to the information in your file - you should know that first. But I can put two and two together and so that means you’re likely mandated to attend counselling with the Guardians Centre, yes?” 

Cassian keeps his face neutral despite the way the man’s words make the hair on his arms rise. Where was he going with this? Why had he come here? Sure, Cassian hadn't called him when things were going bad on his last mission like he'd promised but that didn't mean he needed a dressing down for it. His failures were his own.

“Taking your silence as a confirmation. Look, they’re good. They’re excellent, actually, which is why I recommended them to Jyn when she asked us to help her get sober. It’s just - fuck, I don’t want to get into this… Cassian, do you understand what I’m trying to say?” Bodhi grumbles and takes the hand that had been motioning around him and pointedly shoves it back in his pocket, his eyes locked on Cassian. 

“I’m not sure I really do,” Cassian replies evenly, watching as the man sighs and chews the inside of his cheek. Clearly he was uncomfortable with the mission he’d been sent on, presumably by - shit.  _ Shit _ . 

“Jyn goes to that group and she’s worried you’re not going to keep going if she's there. I know it’s ridiculous - I’ve tried to tell her that a thousand times - but she doesn’t believe me. I’m not even sure how she knows about what happened - “

“She does. I told everyone that I was mandated to go because I fucked up in the field,” Cassian interjects and Bodhi’s face pales, his eyes closing briefly before he stands up to his full height. 

“Right. Okay. That muddies some things I think,” he says, swallowing thickly. Cassian shifts on his feet and tries not to think about the tangled web he’s caught in. “Look, I’m not going to ask you to try to find another group because if the Alliance wants you in this one then they know what they're doing. I'm also not going to tell Jyn she can find another one because she has roots in this group. But just - I don’t fucking know - Jyn is trying to fix some of her shit too and she just wants to work through it, alright? Maybe you two could just ignore each other and figure it out without it getting messy?"

“So does she want me to ignore her?” Cassian asks softly, a pain opening within him at the thought. He’d do it, if that’s what she wanted, but some small part of him had hoped she wouldn’t shut him out now that their paths had crossed again. 

“I don’t really know what she wants, to be honest. She's Jyn - sometimes she’s startlingly clear, other times she's secretive as fuck,” Bodhi replies. “But maybe you can talk to her before the next session - at least tell her she shouldn't stop coming just because you're there? Maybe if she hears it from you it’ll actually mean something.” 

“I would but I don’t have a way to get a hold of her. She never answers any - “  _ Dios _ , how did you tell someone that you didn't matter enough to even rate a response? “ - She doesn't respond to my messages anymore.” 

“Oh.” Bodhi shifts on his feet and takes a second before pulling out his phone, toggling through the screens until he lands on what he wants. His fingers move quickly and in the distance Cassian can hear his own device vibrating somewhere, the message having come through. “She changed her number a while ago because of these spam calls she was getting. She probably forgot to send out the new one. Now you have it. Call her or something. Talk to her so she’ll go back - just, please don’t ask her not to go. She needs this group, Cassian, you don’t understand how much it’s helped her.” 

“I would never ask that of anyone,” Cassian counters and he feels the accusation hit him like a bullet. Was he really that kind of person now? Selfish above all else?

“No, I know you wouldn’t. Really. But I need to think about her right now, okay? She practically destroyed a punching bag last night before her gym called me to come pick her up. I need her to keep going to these sessions - these guys are the only ones that have worked apparently so like, you get it, right? Just talk to her. Sort out whatever is going on with you two, please.” 

“I will. I’ll try. I mean, I’ll call her, okay?” He adds because he can’t promise that he’ll be able to fix whatever the fuck is going on, especially if Jyn doesn’t want to try to fix it. 

“Good. Okay. I’m sorry to just barge in here like this. I know you’ve got a lot happening and I should be here for you too, it’s just - it’s hard being this close to it, you know?” Bodhi says, drawing Cassian’s attention back to the man in front of him. 

“I get it. I wouldn’t want to sink with it either.” Cassian looks at his feet, the words more telling than he’d admit aloud. 

“I don’t know how to talk about it all without my brain putting me back there. I’ve tried but it just makes it harder to keep moving forward,” he adds and Cassian looks at him, sees the suffering tucked behind the quiet exhaustion hidden in the lines of the man’s face. 

“It’s okay, Bodhi. Really. You have to do what you need to do to get right and that’s all that matters.” 

“But we were a team and I - “ 

“You did what you needed to do. You couldn’t have changed it. You weren’t responsible for what happened out there and you aren’t responsible for what’s happening now. Take care of  _ you _ , alright? I’ll manage.” 

“Will you?” Bodhi counters softly and the words feel like a slap, Cassian’s face twisting as he looks down at his feet. The man had found a way through his facade and now he was poking at all of the weak spots Cassian refused to address. “I’m sorry. I should go. Please call her and figure this out. And Cass - if you need something, call me alright?” 

“I’ll give her a call,” Cassian answers, pointedly ignoring the offer. Bodhi sighs and nods, stepping back towards the door and out into the hall without a further goodbye. 


	8. ONE YEAR POST

_Jyn_

She hesitates at the door of the cafe, her fists curling in her pockets. This was where it had all gone off the rails - that first time when she’d suggested they relocate to get a drink. Where she’d put it out there that she wanted him as more than a friendly face. It had been her downfall then and she hoped - prayed - that it wouldn’t be again. 

When Cassian had texted her the day before and asked if he could call she’d nearly flung her phone across the room. But then she’d done what Baze had taught her to do - she’d taken a breath, picked up the phone and called him back. 

_“Of course you can call me,” she grumbles into the phone, her eyes closing as she tries to swallow back the vitriol in her voice. It was the time for kindness. For forgiveness._

_“Doesn’t sound like it,” he laughs and she wants to reach through the phone and strangle him because_ of course _he would laugh when she felt this raw even though all she wanted was to gather that laughter like it was water in a desert. He rarely laughed. She wasn’t even sure she’d heard it since Scarif and it made her ache with a sharp loss. Scarif had stolen so much from them and she wasn’t sure they’d ever get it back._

_“Sorry,” she says after a moment, the silence dragging on between them. She didn’t know what to say. It’s the first time they’ve spoken in months - the first time since she got sober - and she didn’t want to wreck it all in the same moment._

_“So Bodhi came to see me,” he says, saving her from her twisting, anxious thoughts._

_“I asked him not to do that,” she responds evenly, making a mental note to follow up with the man in question as soon as they hung up._

_She had to admit, she’d probably scared her friend when he’d come to pick her up from the gym after the group session where Cassian had walked in almost twenty minutes late looking like someone had put him through a meat grinder. She’d been a little keyed up, her heart wrung out and her words harsh as she’d rumbled like a storm. Bodhi had tried to calm her with appeasing words but all it had done was spur her on further, her declaration that she couldn’t go back making him almost pass out._

_“He said you weren’t going to go back to group,” Cassian says, drawing her from her own thoughts. “I wanted to tell you that I can find another one, if you want me to. You can have this one. You can have them all. I’ll figure out - “_

_“Cassian,” she sighs, her eyes closing as she grips the phone tighter in her hand. “It wasn’t because you were there. It wasn’t you.”_

_“Oh,” his breathing catches and she can hear it through the phone and it makes her want to curl up into a ball and hide under her covers._

_“I didn’t want to be the thing that stopped you from getting the help you need. Bodhi didn’t - he got caught up and thought I meant I would stop going altogether. Which I won’t. But I’ll - I mean, if you want that group - if you have to go to that one - I’ll give it to you. I’ll find another one so you can keep going and you don’t have to deal with seeing me every time - “_

_“Jyn,” his voice cracks and she wants to reach for him, wants to curl around him like she used to when he woke up from a bad dream. “Jyn - I didn’t… I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m so sorry I made this worse for you. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to bleed all over you like this. I should have just - I don’t know. Maybe I should have never - “_

_“It wasn’t you,” she whispers and there’s a strangled sound on the other end of the line, one that she feels clench around her heart. “I had - have - so much to work through Cassian. From what happened to me growing up and the way I never really dealt with any of it. It wasn’t you that did that to me. It was me and it was my past and we just happened to be crumbling in the same vicinity to one another.”_

_“But I hurt you - that last night. I hurt you,” he says on a broken exhale and she shakes her head even though he can’t see it, the pain of it echoing through her._

_“You didn’t. You didn’t and you need to - Cassian, fucking listen to me, okay? You never hurt me. Not once. Maybe we weren’t always kind to one another but that’s different. You’re a good man, Cassian. You’re so good and you take things so close that sometimes you think it’s your fault but it’s not. Scarif wasn’t and that night wasn’t. I left because I was so wrung out that I needed to run and it wasn’t that I was running away from you - I was trying to run away from myself.”_

_“I should have helped you,” he says after a long pause, his voice wavering as Jyn scoffs._

_“I needed to help myself. You couldn’t have done anything until I was ready. You know how stubborn I am,” she adds and laughs because she can’t believe she’s having this conversation with the one man she knew she needed to make amends with. She needed to see him. She needed to make this right in person._

“You came,” a voice says from behind her, her cheeks heating as she turns to see Cassian standing a few feet away. He still looks rough, like he hadn’t eaten in a few days at least, but his hair is combed and his beard is trimmed and she misses him so much that she has to force herself not to launch across the distance and feel his arms wrap around her. 

“It’s one of the steps,” she jokes because she can barely formulate any response as he moves half a step closer. She can smell his shampoo and the memories wallop her senses - his hands and his breath and she can’t - 

“Should we go inside?” He says, breaking through her thoughts and causing her to startle with it. His lips remain in a tight line and she wonders if he’s having the same warring thoughts, if her presence is making him as off-balance as she is when they step through the cafe’s doors. 

They purchase their drinks and find a small booth in the back, tucking themselves in the corner and sipping at the scalding liquid to put off saying anything for a few minutes longer. She doesn’t know where to start. Should she tell him where she’s been? How many days clean she has? What it was like to wake up and not feel the spins for the first time in so many months? 

Or, _she could tell him why she left_ , Baze’s voice rings in the back of her head, reminding her of what she’d indicated was one of her biggest regrets in the way she left things. 

“You look like shit,” is what she settles on, half-joking and half-serious. His lips curl up in a hint of a smile and she watches as his shoulders relax, his posture easing into the seat. 

“Thanks. You look…” He shifts and runs his eyes quickly up her frame before darting them back to the drink in his hands. “You look good.” 

“Must be all the calisthenics they make you do to sweat out the booze,” she replies and his lips hitch up a little bit more, the crinkle in the corner of his eyes returning for the first time in so long. 

“How was it, at the centre?” She shrugs and takes a sip of her drink, almost like a habit. 

“It sucked. But when I left I felt better so I guess it was worth it. How is it… Are you still..?”

“No. I stopped after - I mean, they didn’t have it while I was posted so it was easier,” he mutters and his voice lowers like it did when he talked about things he wasn’t really keen to talk about. 

“I’m glad. Not because I - I just, am glad,” Jyn fumbles awkwardly with the sentiment and chews the inside of her cheek. She’d asked to meet him. She wanted to make sure she would be able to see him every week without it making her flip out every time but this was so much harder than she expected. 

“I’m sorry for the way everything fell apart,” Cassian whispers when the silence becomes almost suffocating, his gaze finally rising to meet hers. He looks sincere, pained, and she hates it. 

“I’m not. I’m sorry for how out of control it got but I’m not sorry for meeting you. For being with you. I’m not sorry for that.” And she isn’t. If she could do it all over again she probably would just because it’s Cassian and she thinks she loves him and she doesn’t know what to do with that feeling despite how painful it might be. 

“I should have been better for you though. I shouldn’t have let - “ 

“Cassian, stop. We did it together, okay? We both brought our demons to the party and we both played a part in letting it get as bad as it did. You didn’t ruin me and I didn’t ruin you. We both fucked up,” she blurts, her knuckles white as she grips the cup. She wanted to reach for him. To grab his hand and feel his pulse against her skin. She wanted - 

“I don’t know how to be better. I’m really fucking stuck this time,” he whispers almost too low to hear. But she does and it makes her heart race. 

She said she wouldn’t give in to her impulses. She said she would take it slow. She promised herself that she would do this right and protect herself from falling back into his orbit but she can’t just sit here and watch as his brow tightens and his jaw tenses until she can almost feel his teeth cracking under the pressure. 

Even though she told herself all of that she can’t seem to stop her body from moving until it’s beside him, her fingers prying his loose from his cup until they’re linked together. From her spot next to him she can feel his warmth, can feel the bones in his hand like brittle things as he shakes almost imperceptibly against her. 

“I’m going away for awhile, Jyn,” he says eventually, his hand twisting in hers until their palms are pressed together. His thumb rubs circles over her knuckles as she tries to breathe through what he’s saying. Cassian, gone? “It’s not because of you or what happened with us. I need some time to sort this all out and I can’t do it here. I can’t catch my breath here so I need to get away.” 

“How long?” She asks evenly, despite how desperate she feels inside. 

“I don’t know. It might be a few weeks or a few months. I’m not sure if I’ll come back here, to be honest.” 

“Are you - please don’t tell me you’re - Cassian, are you going to hurt yourself? Is that - are you trying to - “ She feels the dread build and she can’t stop herself from squeezing his hand tighter, the fear painful like a vise around her. She knew he was hurting - she could see it clear as day - but this was all so much. If he was going to hurt himself she needed to get him help now. The alternative wasn’t an option. 

“No,” he exhales and shifts until he’s looking at her head on, his head dipping to catch her gaze. “No, I promise I’m not.” 

“You aren’t lying to me to make me feel better?” She murmurs because if she spoke any louder she would surely start to cry. 

“I will never lie to you Jyn. Not about this or anything else. I just need some time to get right and I need you to know that it’s not because of you,” Cassian urges and lifts his hand to her chin, closing the circle of their entwined hands. “Meeting you was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It reminded me that there’s more to this life than just the cause and I need to go and figure out how I fix the rest of myself with that realization.” 

“When are you leaving?” It hurts to breathe, to keep her tears inside. She wants to kiss him. She wants to never let him go but she knows she has to. 

“A couple days. I’m waiting for a few things to arrive before I take off. But I thought you should know…” 

“That I might never see you again?” 

“Yeah,” he admits softly, a sad smile on his lips as his thumb brushes the escaped tear from her cheek. “I hope you keep getting better. I want you to live like this was just a blip in your life, okay?” 

“If you’re just going to disappear then I need you to promise me something - I need you to let me know you’re still alive. I don’t care how you do it. You just need to do it because otherwise I’ll - “ 

“I’ll try - “ 

“ _No!_ ” She bursts and all the emotions she’s trying to keep pent up inside leak from her soul in that one syllable. “You can’t just disappear without proving to me that you’re still alive because otherwise I’ll convince myself that you’ve died and I don’t know what I’ll do if I know you’re not out there!” Her panicked words spill from her lips and his eyes soften, his arms coming to wrap around her and pull her until she’s crushed against his chest. His heart is racing almost as madly as hers and she clings to him like a buoy in the ocean. 

“Okay,” he whispers into her ear, his voice raspy. “Okay. I’ll keep in touch. Once a month. I promise.” 

“If you don’t, I _will_ come find you,” she threatens, her voice harsh and thick with tears as he clenches his hands against her once more. 

They sit there wrapped together for a while longer until Jyn is the first to pull back, her hands wiping her eyes as she reaches for her cup and swallows the last of her drink. She needed to get out of here before she tried to convince him to stay. She needed to leave before she became desperate for him not to go. 

“Once a month then,” she says eventually, her mouth dry and her whole body aching. 

“Once a month under penalty of your wrath,” he adds and she hates him and loves him and wishes he wasn’t going to leave her behind. 

They pull further apart and slowly gather themselves to leave, getting to their feet and uncertainly heading towards the door to the shop. Jyn swallows back a thousand things that she wants to say, all of them petty and needy and too unforgiving than she was ready to put out between them. 

She could give him this. She could let him go and still be okay. 

Out on the street she turns to him once more and looks him over, head to toe, before biting the inside of her cheek so hard that she tastes blood. 

“Thank you for trusting me enough to come,” he says carefully, his hands tucked in his pockets as she moves her weight from one foot to the other. “I’m glad I could tell you in person, I mean.” 

“You will come back one day, right?” She asks and it pains her to say it, her weakness bleeding through as he smiles back at her. 

“I wouldn’t hope - “ 

“All I’ve got left is hope, Cassian,” she interjects, her brow tightening as he looks away. She doesn’t want it to end like this. She doesn’t want him to leave now. She can’t - 

Her body acts on instinct, stepping towards him and lifting up to capture his lips with hers. He stumbles in surprise and it only takes him a second to catch up, one hand lifting to her chin and the other holding steady at her hip as she leans him back against the brick wall. When she pulls back she only gives him an inch, her breath heavy between them as his fingers tighten their hold. He doesn’t push her away and she can barely think through _that_ realization before she’s pulled closer and his lips find hers once more. 

The kiss is searing, promising, and she’s okay if she dies right now because it feels like maybe now would be a good end to things for her. 

But she doesn’t die and neither does he and somehow they end up back at hers and she knows it’s risky what she’s doing and she knows it’s going to hurt even more in the morning but she can’t help it. She doesn’t want him to leave without telling him exactly how much she loves him. Not with words because she doesn’t have those just yet but with the way her hands ghost over his skin and with how she clings to him as he pulls her into his arms and she goes with him because to not would be to go against every instinct that’s screaming inside of her to wrap herself around him. 

They don’t make it to her room and maybe that’s better. Safer. When Cassian’s knees buckle and he collapses onto her couch she follows after him and straddles his lap, their lips barely breaking contact with the shift. His hands lock on her hips and she cards her fingers through his hair until he whimpers with the feel of it, his body tense under her tentative touch. It’s only when he pulls back to catch his breath that she feels the hesitation in his grip, the reluctance in his frame. 

“I can stop,” she lies, the taste of the words bitter on her tongue as she pulls minutely away, her hair falling loose between them. “Tell me to leave you alone and I’ll do it.” 

“I can’t,” he whispers back and lifts his hands to the back of her neck, guiding her until their foreheads are pressed together and he’s panting between them. 

“Tell me you don’t want me, Cassian,” she murmurs, her eyes closed as she holds back tears with the torrent of emotions circling through her. “Tell me that’s why you’re leaving so I can let you go.” 

“I can’t,” he repeats and it’s pained and it stabs her like a hot knife. “I can’t lie to you Jyn. I can’t tell you I don’t love you because it’s not true. But I need to get better. I need to be better for you.” 

She realizes then that he’s telling her the words she owed to him that night she ran away. He’s doing what she couldn’t bring herself to do all those months ago and it all starts to click as she understands what he’s trying to say. He needs to stop before he topples over the edge. He needs to let her go so that he can restart. 

She needs to let him go. 

“Okay,” she whispers eventually, nuzzling against his cheek as he holds her as close as she can get. They sit there entwined together until her breathing starts to steady and her legs grow stiff. Despite the way her body protests, she doesn’t want to move from his embrace, her awareness that once she did it would be over too terrifying to admit. 

But all things must change and eventually Cassian presses his lips to her temple, his fingers grazing her cheek as she draws back from him. 

“I should go,” he says lowly, his eyes lifting to hers as his expression softens. She jerks a quick nod and then looks away, biting her tongue as the pain of it ricochets inside of her. His lips find her cheek in a ghost of a kiss, his beard scruffing against her chin as his hands drift from her shoulders down to her hips. 

She shifts off of him and sits heavily on the couch as he gets to his feet, his hands straightening his clothes as he tries to control the way his breaths come out in near pants, almost like he didn’t want to do what he was forcing himself to do. 

With one final look, Cassian gives her a tight smile and closes his eyes, turning on his heel and heading towards the door at a clipped pace. She wishes she could say something - _anything_ \- to stop him from walking out that door but she knows she can’t. He needs this. She needs this. And so she keeps her ‘ _I love you’_ locked behind her lips as he steps through the door and walks out of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I know I said good times were coming and I promise they are, but we've still got one more difficult chapter after this and then we're in the healing stretch. To keep ya'll updated, it went back up to 12 chapters (possibly 13 with an epilogue if you want it?) and chapter 10-12 are all up-swings at 20k+ words! Thank you so much to anyone out there reading and leaving kudos/comments, much love and hoping you're still with me on this ride!


	9. TWO YEARS POST

_ Cassian _

_ It doesn’t look that bad _ , he thinks as he looks at the centre and its unassuming entrance. It’s small but the windows are big and there’s no fence to be found in a five-mile radius and maybe he’s okay with that. 

Two years have passed since his mission in Scarif. Two years almost to the exact date of when he accepted the mission and embarked on a path that would change him forever. Had he known then that he would come to this place broken and missing pieces he might not have gone. 

_ No _ , his brain urges, sharp and insistent.  _ I would have still gone _ . He knows it’s true because that’s just who he was and he couldn’t separate himself from the person he’d grown up to be. He was the fixer. He was the guy the Alliance called when the mission needed someone to just get it back on track. But maybe he would have hesitated, knowing that if he went he would have to tear everything down and rebuild it after. That was a concession he could give himself as he observed the unassuming Guardian Centre before him. 

It’s just… He just wished he’d known then how hard this was going to be. How unprepared he would be to deal with this all. Two years ago he would have thought he’d get through something like this fine but now he knew better - he’d come too close to the edge to call himself ‘fine’ anymore and he’d taken down the others with him. 

That’s what he regretted most, if he was being honest. If he’d known this was all going to happen he could have avoided all of the hurt, could have left the others out of it if he’d really tried. Bodhi wouldn’t have had to try to play mediator, Kay wouldn’t have needed to pull him back from the edge. Jyn… Jyn would have been just fine if he hadn’t let his feelings for her grow and they hadn’t become so painfully entwined. The casualties of his survival would have been fewer if only he’d known. 

But he couldn’t change the past and so he tightens his grip on his bag and marches towards the entrance as he tries not to think about the year that’s gone by.

_ He goes north first because he’s never been there before and he thinks that maybe it’ll help him regain some of his balance a bit quicker.  _

_ It doesn’t.  _

_ The early snow is harsh and unforgiving and the car he’s rented refuses to start on more than one occasion. Where his initial plan had involved him camping or sleeping in the backseat along the way, he’s had to improvise and move indoors to sketchy motels and tiny B&B’s that he can afford. They smell of dust and desperation and more than once he has to snap his mind out of the idea that maybe he should just let go of the wheel and press his foot into the gas pedal until there are no more decisions to make.  _

_ Cassian isn’t sure when the desire to just let go starts to wane. He thinks maybe it’s sometime between the Great Lakes and the Prairies but if he had to pinpoint it he couldn’t be sure - he’d simply started driving one day and gone the whole six hours without once looking at a bridge barrier and wondering where it’s weakest point would be.  _

_ That was progress. It had to be.  _

_ He thinks he hates it up north - hates the quiet and the endless highway - but he sticks it out because he has nowhere else to go. No home to belong to or place that felt like he could exist without the dreams and the misery that followed him. And so he keeps driving - some days pausing in places longer than others, exploring places he’s never seen, other days driving straight through until he’s so exhausted that he crosses the dividing lines one too many times for comfort.  _

_ There’s no strict path that he follows as he goes. More than once he’s doubled back at the suggestion of another traveller, their recommendation of a long-forgotten spot making him loop back just to see a place or a thing that made someone else feel something. He was longing to feel something, wasn’t he? Something other than the hurt that still slithered through him?  _

_ Days blend together as he goes along and before he realizes it he’s already been gone long enough to send a message back home. He keeps it short because he doesn’t have much else to say, his thoughts of Jyn and her touch a messy jumble in his memory causing his insides to twist uncomfortably.  _

Jyn - 

I’ve made it somewhere where I’ve almost started to miss the sticky nights in the jungle. Hope you’re well. 

\- C

_ He doesn’t include a return address and he thinks maybe that it’s fitting for how aimless he feels as he drives the highways with no end destination in mind.  _

_ It’s at the edge of the Rocky Mountains that Cassian feels his first moment of awe in nearly a decade. A shiver runs up his spine as he pulls off to the side of the road and climbs out of his car, stepping through the snow to look at them without the haze of the windshield. They tower overhead all snow-capped peaks and jutting out of the ground like a fracture ripping its way upward. They’re beautiful and brutal and he doesn’t know how long he stands there looking at them but his hands are numb when he crawls back into his seat.  _

_ It isn’t a decision to stay at the base of the mountains - it’s a calling that forces him to settle in the small towns and cabins he can tuck himself into for the next few weeks.  _

Jyn - 

Have you ever seen the mountains? White-tipped and touching the sky? 

\- C

_ He sends his second message on a postcard with those same mountains rising up through the clouds, their peaks hidden behind a storm building in the distance. He’d survived that storm, he was pretty sure.  _

_ His car had been parked in one of the overnight lots off the side of the highway and he’d burrowed into his down-filled sleeping bag for the night, determined to see the sun rise over the sprawling park around him. He’d told himself that the wind picking up was nothing to worry about. That the thrashing of the pine trees against his windshield was something he could sleep through.  _

_ But he’d lied to himself and the night had turned into a rumbling burst of noise that had made his body sit on edge as the darkness closed in. He lay hidden from the outside world as a storm raged overhead, crashing trees and mixed precipitation falling from the sky in violent waves.  _

_ It was only when the dawn finally broke that he realized he had been in the storm since he returned from Scarif. Everything from the last few months had seemed harsher than ever before - the wounds cutting deeper and the struggles more vicious - and he’d had no way forward except to shelter in place. He was at the precipice now, if he wanted to be, and all he had to do was cross through the mountains of his life and come out on the other side.  _

_ A week later Cassian is cutting through the switchbacks and over the ridge towards the coast, driving and stopping to rest at intervals when he grows tired. The roads vary in passability and it’s only on his third ravaged route that he finds his way to the other side of the mountainous region, coming down in elevation until he sees the glint of the ocean on the horizon.  _

_ He takes the roads along the coast from there, travelling southbound and revelling in the heat that builds more with every mile closer to the equator that he gets. _

_ Cassian arrives in the south a month after setting out, the road taking him across borders and through towns until he remembers where he’s going.  _

_ The village sits on the coast, a tiny junction of desolate houses and nearly abandoned churches. It’s the place where he’d spent time as a child, long before he’d been taken north and into a country that didn’t want him. It was back home, almost, if one could call a place that was merely a starting point for his existence a home.  _

_ It wasn’t his home. He didn’t have a home. Never had. Not until - no.  _

Jyn - 

I’ve gone back to where I was born. There’s nothing for me here. I’m starting to think there’s nothing for me anywhere. 

\- C

_ The note makes his stomach sour and the next day he pops another one in the mail just to be safe.  _

Jyn - 

That sounded dire. Please know it isn’t. You’ll get another note from me in a month.

\- C

_ He leaves the village and heads to the city again so he can get lost in it. There’s a comfort to the anonymity of renting a cheap apartment for a month, disappearing into a facade that masks everything that you’ve become. Cassian thrives in becoming someone he’s not - going about an aimless life as he tests out setting down roots.  _

_ They don’t take. Not immediately, at least.  _

_ On his second week in the city he finds himself at a coffee shop that reminds him of the last one he’d been to with Jyn. The aesthetic is so similar that it makes him nearly recoil - pausing at the entrance as he looks around in shocked silence. It’s only when the barista calls him forward to order that he remembers what he’d come in for.  _

_ “Café con leche, por favor,” he orders and digs through his pockets for the loose change he keeps on hand. When he looks up, the girl’s green eyes and dark hair make him swallow thickly. Her bangs are too long and hang in her eyes and he thinks maybe she looks -  _

_ “Cuarenta y seis, por favor.” She smiles and he feels it like a gut punch, the desire sparking in him like a flash fire.  _

_ The moment tenses and he swallows, smiling at her and feeling lightheaded as she grins in return.  _

_ Five visits later and she’s joining him for his morning coffee. Eight visits later and she’s taking him to dinner. Nine visits later and she’s in his bed and he’s running his hands up her sides, his mouth dragging along her skin as she sighs above him. She doesn’t let him undress her and he doesn’t ask to, the light turned off and the dark wrapping around them like a heavy cloak. There’s no awkward boundaries to negotiate, no hesitation as they fumble and join together in a hurried mess. When she comes under his ministrations there’s no hint of pain, no discussion of what they mean when they whisper each other's names, and he lets himself get lost in it all like he’s cast adrift.  _

_ In the bright morning light she stands at the edge of the bed, hastily pulling her clothes on as Cassian tries not to think of another form, one with skin so different from the smooth golden woman standing before him. There are no battle wounds on this woman, no stories told in her skin, and the realization that she isn’t Jyn comes rumbling back to him like a wave in the ocean.  _

_ “¿Te volveré a ver?” He asks as she looks up at him with a frown. She shifts uneasily and shakes her head, her hair falling in her face.  _

_ “Your heart. It is for someone else,” she replies in her heavily accented English. He hadn’t even thought to warn her - he’d just assumed she wouldn’t understand his mumbled nightmares if he'd had any. But he must have and without question he knew which ones had likely played a starring role in his restless sleep. _

_ “Lo siento,” he murmurs, cheeks flaming and hands clenching in his sheets. He doesn't know what else to say and so instead he stays silent. She exhales, pauses, and then leans towards him to press her palm to his cheek, her kindness more than he deserved.  _

_ “Vete a casa, Cassian.” Her words linger long after she’s left his apartment.  _

_ Aimless, aching, Cassian spirals alone in this country he should have belonged to. The drinking returns - not heavy, but still there - to calm his nights and help him settle from the anxious walking he submits himself to every day. There’s no section of the city he doesn’t explore, his feet taking him through side streets and small parks until the sun disappears behind the edges of the buildings.  _

_ He decides to take to the continental hiking trail without much fanfare, determined to walk a route that would get him clean and force him to come to grips with himself without damaging anyone else. It’s his last hope, his last chance at salvation, and maybe there’s a small part of him that hopes he meets an uncertain fate so he doesn’t have to deal with the fallout of everything he’s done.  _

Take me instead _. _

_ It rings in his nightmares. _

But I love you, Jyn.

_ It clogs his throat.  _

_ Kay agrees to help him prepare packages for his route and Cassian releases the hold on his apartment, moving north once again with his car and a trunk full of gear. From the city on the edge of the trail, Cassian packs his bag and returns his rental, apologizing for the miles as the man looks him over.  _

_ Cassian knows he looks ragged - can feel it in his bones - but he pays his tab and walks back to his motel for one more night in some semblance of comfort. It’s there he sends his letter to Jyn, confessing his sins and hoping she never receives it. Hoping she’s moved on without him.  _

Jyn - 

I hope you’re well. I hope you’re recovering and that you’re moving forward into a life that you’ve carved out for yourself. I miss y  I’m heading out on an adventure tomorrow. I don’t know if I’ll be able to let you know I’m out here but know that I am, if it’s within my control. 

I’m sorry for the way things were. For how I hurt what I did  That you were caught up in my wake and I couldn’t help you the way I should have. You deserved better than what I was able to give. You deserve better than what anyone has been able to give you in this life. I know I don’t deserve it, but if you could remember me fondly if you could forgive me then I would know you’ll be alright. I’m asking you to let me go, if you haven’t already - don’t wait for me. 

Yours, 

C

_ He posts it before he can tear it up, sticking it in the mailbox on the corner before returning to his room and trying to sleep.  _

_ Three weeks pass. Day in and day out he walks with everything he owns on his back. Blisters and burns and bruises appear and disappear like battle wounds that he pushes through. Every morning he wakes and stares up at the ceiling of his tent, debating whether today will be the day he feels free. When night rolls in once more, again and again, he curls deeper into his sleeping bag and tries not to let the dark hours eat away at him.  _

_ He picks up delivered gear along his route, packages of food from Kay’s deliveries and lost items that he needs to replace to keep himself functioning in the harsh backwoods he hikes through every day. On his rest day he debates writing another letter to Jyn, just to let her know he’s still out here, but he thinks she’ll do better without him and backs down from the idea.  _

_ Cassian doesn’t make friends on the trail. He hikes and rests and completes the log books without much to say, ever moving forward and keeping his own schedule.  _

_ Everything changes though when he reaches the Sierras.  _

_ The snowpack is high and the trail is impassable and so he waits for it to melt and for his life to sort itself out. He starts to realize that this whole trip - from going north to going to his birthplace - was almost an effort in futility. His mind wasn’t getting better. The exhaustion wasn’t going away and sure, yes, he was drinking less, but it still hurt to wake up in a cold sweat with a soaked sleeping bag and a restless nervousness that would not let him be. The bags under his eyes were severe and his body was barely holding on, more than once simply giving up on him as he moved along the path.  _

_ Maybe that’s why when the snow finally becomes passable he sets out with a hesitation in his step. A heavy voice in the back of his head tells him not to go, to finally stay and rest at the edge of the abyss. It sounds like his mother and he doesn’t know why now she’s finally come back to try to guide him on how to keep living.  _

_ When Cassian collapses in a snowbank on the edge of the trail one sunny afternoon, all blue skies and sparkling snow, he thinks  _ finally _. Finally he’s done. Finally he’s spent.  _

_ Finally they will get their payment. _

_ “Hey buddy, you alright?” Someone calls a short distance away. Cassian can hear the snow-crunch of their footsteps picking up as they rush towards him, their lightweight coats tied around their waists. “What happened? You injured? We saw you collapse.”  _

_ For a drawn out moment Cassian debates lying, saying he’s fine and could they just leave him alone? But the words won’t come and he tries to focus but it’s impossible to do anything but tell the truth.  _

_ “I need help,” he whispers, his throat tightening and his body tensing until he’s almost shaking with it. The woman kneels before him and frowns, her eyes dragging over him and his half-self that he’s worn down to the bone.  _

_ “Alright. We’ll get you some help,” she answers softly and when her hand rests over his, giving it a gentle squeeze, Cassian finally,  _ finally _ , breaks.  _

The inside of the Guardian Centre is like no home he’s ever been in but surely one that someone has imagined into existence. It rises overhead to a peak above the reception desk, almost like a temple reaching up into the sky and shining light on those below it. 

“Hello, how can I help you?” The man at the desk asks, his gaze flickering over Cassian’s rough shape, his worn clothes and tight skin. 

“I’m checking in for the Redemption Program. Baze Malbus instructed me to - “ 

“Yes, of course. We’ve been expecting your arrival and we’re glad you’re here. Let’s get you sorted and then we’ll show you to your quarters, alright?” Cassian nods and completes his paperwork, all the while his hand shakes whether from nerves or hunger he isn’t quite sure. He needed to eat better -  _ no _ , he needed to eat, period. His collapse on the trail had proven as much and it was part of how he knew he was really, truly sick. 

He spends his first week with the shakes though he tries to hide it. Maybe he had been drinking more than he realized or it was just that it had been all he was consuming these last weeks. Maybe he’d been lying to himself to try to get better. He wasn’t sure - all he was sure of now was that he felt like he was dying once and for all as he shuffled around his solitary sobriety room. 

Three weeks after his imagined death, Cassian is offered a visitor registry, the support worker holding out a pen with an expectant smile on their face. 

“I don’t think anyone would come try to find me here,” he answers lowly, turning back to his puzzle. The worker makes a noise, like they’re about to speak, before they sigh and withdraw the pen before turning and heading away. 

Chirrut, the man from the group therapy he’d quit, was assigned as his designated counsellor at the centre and Cassian figured it was a twist of fate - or of the Alliance’s meddling - that brought them back together. It’s a few days after the visitor registry was presented that Chirrut brings the incident up in his next private session. Cassian tries to brush it off, looking out the window as the man tries to remind him of the idea of hope that he’d once clinged to. 

“They can’t see me unless I’m better,” he snaps eventually, his brow furrowing at the slip of his control. 

“And if you do not get better? What then?” Chirrut presses, his finger tapping against his walking stick. Cassian grits his teeth and tries to think through the question despite the panic that floods him. 

If he didn’t get better? Wasn’t he here to get better? This was - it was his only option now. If he didn’t walk out of here able to think clearly, able to be a productive member of society, then what was he even doing here? If he couldn’t be salvaged then maybe he should be six feet under. If he - 

“You need to acknowledge the reality that you are human, Cassian. Humans need other humans to survive - they need support systems and to belong to something. If you do not have this then the probability of you recovering narrows significantly. Do you think you’re doing this alone?” 

“Aren’t I?” Cassian replies evenly, willing to play into Chirrut’s hand for the moment. 

“Am I not a person then?” Chirrut counters and seems to perk up at the game he’s started to play. 

“No, you are, but - “ 

“Are you not supported by a whole team of individuals who are concerned about you here?” He presses and Cassian sighs, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. 

“I am.”

“Right then. So if you planned to replicate your success here back home, would you not need a support system there?” 

“Yes,” Cassian mumbles, rubbing his hands fitfully over his face. 

“Good. Then put some damn names on your visitation list and I can get back to addressing your real issues, okay?” Chirrut adds and Cassian is sure he hears a smile in the man’s voice, his giddiness at trapping Cassian in his own logic pleasing him beyond reproach. 

After the session, Cassian reluctantly adds two names to the list of people he knows won’t bother to come visit him and then returns to his room to wallow for the rest of the afternoon. 

It’s almost a week later when he’s summoned to the visitors area, confusion bubbling within him as he checks in with the attendant at the desk. 

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Bodhi says, the man’s soft voice startling him. 

“Bodhi? How did you know I was here?” His instinct is to run, as though he’d been discovered breaking into a bank vault, or his cover had been blown in some semblance of a spy movie. The instinct is ridiculous, he knows, but it still screams at him as the man takes a hesitant step closer. 

“Kay hacked the personnel systems when you fell off the map out west and your packages were returned to him. He was worried,” Bodhi adds, though Cassian has a hard time picturing his friend doing something so normal as worrying. 

“Perhaps you two would like to head on back? Visitors' spaces are clearly marked throughout the centre,” the attendant interjects as Cassian twists his hands together uneasily. 

He wasn’t prepared for anyone to actually show up, let alone Bodhi. What would he want to talk about? Surely he hadn’t come to chastize him for his letters to Jyn? Or worse, for stopping his letters to her? He didn’t know what the man wanted and when he’d put his name down on his visitors log he really hadn’t expected him to ever show up. Not after the mess he’d left behind when he went away. But here he was, haunting the lobby of the one place Cassian had actually started to settle in all his months since Scarif. 

“Sure, thank you. Cassian, why don’t we go for a walk?” Bodhi suggests, tearing him back from his ruminating thoughts. With no excuse to get out of it, Cassian nods and lets Bodhi lead him through the building and out into the rear yard. 

They walk in silence towards the treeline, the scuff of their shoes on the rocky path beneath their feet the only sound to keep them company as they go. Cassian debates breaking the silence, turning over ideas of what he could say as though he was running through a list of icebreakers. Thankfully it’s Bodhi who once again starts the conversation, his voice friendly. 

“What was the best thing you saw when you were gone?” He asks brightly, as though he actually wanted to know the answer. Cassian wavers, looking off in the distance. 

Was this a trick? Did he come just to rub it in his face that he was well and Cassian was not? Or worse, did he come to tell him off for disappearing? For trying to get out of the press of a heel on his neck?

“Look, Rook, I’m not sure what you’re getting at but if this is about what I did to Jyn - “ 

“I’m actually not here for her. She doesn’t even know you’re here, so you can bypass the conspiracy theory that’s probably brewing in your brain right now. I’m here because I was worried about you and I thought you could use a friend,” Bodhi counters, his pace never slowing. “I had a rule, before, when I was here with her. We didn’t talk about you guys - like, at all. So let’s just have that rule too, yeah? I want to be here to be your friend, no strings attached. I’m not interested in being an intermediary or a spy for either of you.” 

It takes half the forest path for Cassian to come to terms with what Bodhi is saying, all of his hesitations being forced into submission as he sighs and looks towards the man. 

“The mountains. They were the best part, I think,” Cassian says eventually. A calming feeling coming over him as he tries not to interpret just what it means to have a friend in this world that he’d been absolutely certain was ready to throw him out. 

His visitor log grows from two to four, Kay and Shara and Kes joining him weekly for walks and games as he slowly comes back to himself. He never asks about Jyn and they never bring her up and it’s probably for the best because even Baze and Chirrut refuse to delve into his ruminations about her, instead always turning his attention back to himself and the life he wants for himself when he leaves the centre. 

By the time he checks out, Cassian has spent ninety-eight days at the Guardian Centre. Ninety-eight days of evolution, of self-care that made him dig down into himself until it left him bare and exposed. Months of doubt and pain that slowly turned to acceptance as he began to understand himself again. His appetite returned and his ideations of hurting himself slowed to a near non-existence and when he had his first week of uninterrupted sleep he felt like maybe he could take on the world again. 

By the time he checks out of the centre, Cassian feels like his wounds have been patched and he’s able to go home and figure out what comes next. He sees a future and it’s no longer in the shadow of his past. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, here we are - an evolution that finally finds some release. Now we begin the upswing.


	10. TWO YEARS SIX MONTHS POST

Jyn arrives at the venue late, her hair pulled back in a low chignon as she wears a navy dress that felt too fancy for comfort. She was out of her element here, her usual attire of jeans and t-shirts ill suited for the high-end wedding that Shara and Kes had somehow managed to afford. 

“You look lost,” Bodhi says from behind her, his voice light as Luke comes around the corner a moment later and wraps an arm over her friend’s shoulders.

“I’m trying to understand the seating chart,” she grumbles, looking over the complex diagram and pretending not to understand the very clearly assigned seating. In all reality, she perfectly understood which table she was seated at but she was hesitating. 

Cassian was at the same table. Not next to her, at least, her plus one was supposed to be between them, but  _ still _ . He was going to be sitting near her and she hadn’t seen him since he left all those months ago. 

She was torn - she’d known he was leaving and might not come back. She’d understood that when he left. But when his letters had stopped she’d thought he was dead, her mind focusing on the worst case scenario as soon as the first month went by without a note from him. Bodhi had been there to talk her down from the fear and even Kay had stopped by to give her some reassurance despite the tension that had always existed between them. 

When she’d found out he was safe, that he was alive and at the Guardian Centre, she’d practically wept in relief. Only one person had been around for that display and Jyn hadn’t quite known how to explain to Scott just why news of Cassian going to rehab was affecting her so much. Thankfully he hadn’t pressed, understanding that she had some parts of her history she didn’t want to share, even with the guy she was sleeping with regularly now. 

Scott. How was she going to explain his empty chair to Cassian? To Bodhi and Luke? Bodhi would deflect the conversation, she was sure of it, but Luke would want to know every detail. How they were doing, was he moving in like they’d talked about at dinner a few weeks ago. The standard questions you asked of a couple who had been together a few months now. 

But there was a problem with that line of questioning and Jyn definitely did not want to talk about it with her old… Whatever-Cassian-was-to-her sitting one seat over, fresh out of rehab. Only Bodhi knew that the relationship between her and Scott was on thin ice. Not because of something he’d done, no, this was all her and the ghost of Cassian that seemed to follow her around and only grow more ominous now that he was back in her realm. 

“He probably won’t even show up,” Bodhi says lowly into her ear, his hand touching her shoulder and making her jump. 

“It’s fine,” she says brightly, turning to look at the couple. “Shall we go inside? I hear there’s food.” 

Bodhi gives her a measuring look before motioning for her to lead the way, the three of them heading into the room and the party that awaits them. 

The early reception goes off without a hitch - the music is light and the hors d’oeuvres are plentiful and Jyn finds herself dancing with anyone who asks because why the fuck not at a wedding? She actively works to forget the man in the back of her mind, choosing instead to focus on the here and now so that the mood of the night wouldn’t be ruined by worry. 

It’s only when Luke and her are returning to their table after cornering the mini-toastas server that Jyn feels the rush of panic run through her in a rapid burn, snaking up her spine and making her fingers go numb. 

“Jyn?” Luke worries, his fingers brushing her elbow. 

“He’s really not dead,” she whispers, so quietly that even she’s convinced she’s only said it in her head. Beside her, Luke looks to where she’s staring and sighs, moving to stand in front of her to block her view. 

“You’re both adults and I don’t want to put my oar in here but Jyn, if anything happens and you want to leave tonight all you need to do is tell me, alright?” Luke offers and turns back to the table before grabbing her hand and leading them over. 

Bodhi lounges in his chair next to Cassian, the two deep in conversation as Luke and Jyn move towards them, coming up on the table unnoticed. She recalled somewhere in the back of her mind that Bodhi had visited him at the centre, like he’d visited her when she’d been in his place, and she could only imagine that’s why they were seated beside one another at all. They hadn’t been the closest before everything happened but standing here, observing, Jyn was certain that their friendship had grown without her even realizing. It’s only when Luke clears his throat that the two men look up and notice who the new arrivals are. Cassian is the first to react, getting to his feet and nearly knocking the chair over in his haste. 

“Jyn,” he states, licking his lips and fidgeting with his hands, almost like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He looked good - his suit was fit and he’d put on a healthy amount of weight, his colour no longer the sallow sunken look that had once haunted him. Jyn hated that she noticed. “You look - you look nice.” 

“Thanks,” she replies tightly, looking to Bodhi for saving. 

“It’s a surprise to see her so cleaned up. Even we barely recognized her,” Bodhi says brightly and leans forward to pull a chair out for her before tugging at Cassian’s coat tail with his other hand. “Sit down Cassian, you’re making me nervous.” 

Cassian hesitates, glancing towards the exit as though he was ready to bolt for it in the next second. Jyn ignores Bodhi’s unspoken request, her feet frozen to the floor until Cassian looks back at her and their eyes meet. She feels the connection like a shock of electricity bursting through her, her insides burning up as she tries to swallow around the lump in her throat. 

She takes one step, then two, before all but launching herself at Cassian in an embarrassing display. He doesn’t move as she wraps herself around him, her nose tucking into his neck and her chest pressing against his as she half expects him to disintegrate right here in her arms. 

“You’re not dead,” she whispers again, though this time he can hear her. The words seem to evoke something in him and he finally wraps his arms around her in a tight hug, one hand slipping to the back of her neck and holding her to him like a foolish, precious thing. 

“No. Te extrañé,” he mumbles into the crown of her head, his lips brushing her hair. They stand wrapped around each other until a voice clears its throat, forcing them to step back from one another like teenagers caught necking under the bleachers. 

“Jyn, who - “ Scott asks brightly, his words stopping abruptly as Jyn snaps her gaze towards him. 

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Jyn squeaks, her cheeks flaming as she looks at her partner and his confused expression. 

“I decided it would be rude to waste the food,” he says almost like he’s out of breath. His gaze is locked on Cassian and Jyn pointedly moves further from Cassian almost out of instinct. 

Internally, she scolds herself. She hadn’t done anything wrong - why was she behaving like she had? In her defence, Scott had told her quite clearly earlier today that he wouldn’t be caught dead at this wedding with a woman who despised him so much and wasn’t that as good as telling her it was over? 

“Melshi, it’s been a while,” Cassian interjects as the air grows tight between them, his hand extended towards Scott. Scott takes it and looks at Jyn who looks at Bodhi with almost a panicked look. Bodhi, for all his saving graces, looks purposely at Luke who shrugs and takes a sip of his water to be absolutely no help to her at this moment. 

“It has. Good to see you’re still alive,” he counters swiftly, his arm moving territorially over her shoulders as Cassian slowly recoils. Cassian’s eyes bounce from hers to the floor and then back to the exit, his knuckles turning white as he visibly swallows. 

Where before nobody would have seen the reaction behind his mask, now all people could see was Cassian’s withdrawal, the hurt passing over his face as he looks away. His mask was gone and now all that existed were his emotions clear as day on his face. Jyn wants to reach for him, to run her thumb over the creases in his brow and settle his mask back into place for him, but that wasn’t her place anymore and all she can do is watch him sort through it all with a painful understanding blossoming over his expression. 

“Thanks for that. I’m going to go get a drink - would anyone like anything?” Cassian says, recovering quickly and looking around the table. 

“Nothing for me, thank you. Scott, can we go talk?” Jyn asks evenly, despite the way she was almost shaking from the tension. 

“Sure. I’ll take a whiskey sour,” Scott answers almost as a dig before Bodhi and Luke chime in their orders. 

Jyn doesn’t stick around to hear the rest of the conversation, instead heading quickly towards the exit and hoping Scott is right behind her. She wasn’t prepared for this tonight - she didn’t think she’d ever be prepared for this to happen at all and yet here it was, smacking her in the face when she least expected it. 

“How do you know him?” Jyn snaps as he joins her in the parking lot, his hands in his pockets as he bounces from one foot to the other. 

“He was the TL for my last mission. He got pulled out early for being a nutjob. I didn’t realize your ex was the same guy but now it’s all starting to make perfect sense. You really can pick ‘em, eh?” 

Jyn wants to scream. She wants to push him, to knock him down a peg as all her anger and frustration from earlier in the day comes roaring back in a smothering wave to make her mind foggy and her heart race. But Baze’s voice echoes in her mind -  _ calm yourself, Jyn  _ \- and she feels herself relaxing from her fight or flight response, slowly centering herself and her emotions. She tries to push away the sharpness of his attack, to protect against every small detail feeling like little barbs that cut at her skin, opening old wounds as she looks at the person who is supposed to stand beside her instead of antagonizing her. She’d been right to want to kick him out earlier today. She’d been right to want to end things with him before she settled for someone who was ready to treat her like this. 

“What are you doing here?” She pushes, her arms crossing over her chest in defence.

“I was invited, I’m pretty sure,” he answers glibly, making Jyn growl in annoyance. 

“You said you weren’t coming. You told me that you’d rather die than come here with me tonight.” 

“I changed my mind. Though I’m starting to wonder why I even bothered since you’re already moving on to greener pastures that we’ve already learned are practically half-dead - “ 

“Don’t! Don’t you dare go after him. You can come at me all you want but if you go after a man who fought his way back from a situation that almost destroyed him then you’ll need to go through my fist to get there,” she snarls. Scott watches her with a sharp gaze, his shoulders tense. 

“Alright. He’s off limits for me. As long as he’s off limits for you too, because I’m pretty sure we both remember what the two of you together are like - “ Her palm connects with his cheek before she even realizes what she’s doing, Baze’s exasperated sigh sounding in her head as her slap burns up through her arm and makes her jolt back a step in surprise. Scott stumbles and grasps at his face, his eyes wide. “What the fuck, Jyn?” 

“That was a low blow and if you knew anything about us like you claim to, you’d know that what you’ve just said was so far beyond - “ 

“I don’t know why I even bothered to come here tonight. I don’t know why I bother with anything when it comes to you because every time we move one step forward you are determined to drag us back two. You’re your own worst enemy, Jyn,” he hisses as his hand rubs his reddened skin. 

“I know. I don’t need anyone to tell me what I already know. What I do need is someone who supports me instead of tearing me down and I’m pretty sure you’re incapable of that.” 

“And he is?” Jyn looks away at the accusation in his words, her teeth biting her lip as she settles herself. 

“It doesn’t matter if he is. Cassian and I aren’t getting back together,” she says with a certainty blooming within her. It sounded right - that she was making a choice to move forward instead of backwards - and she feels herself settle with the realization. Cassian wasn’t her future and neither was Scott, apparently. She was her own future. 

_ There you are _ , Baze’s voice whispers,  _ trust your inner force, Jyn _ . 

“You’re both nuts. No wonder you - “ 

“Can you just leave already? You’re ruining my night and I just want to have a good time with my friends before I can’t stand to be in these shoes any longer.” 

Scott looks as though he’s going to say something else and Jyn sighs, turning on her heel to head back inside and take away the one thing she knew he thrived on - her audience. 

She’s only inside the venue for long enough to get a Coke before the wedding party arrives from their photo session, the party finally getting underway as the grand entrance takes hold. When she finds her way back to the table she’s relieved to see Cassian still with Bodhi and Luke, the table having gained a few others in her absence. 

“Still room for me?” She asks as she looks around with a wide smile, her hands clasping her glass almost to the point of shattering it. 

“Of course,” Luke says as he gets to his feet, holding out his chair for her with Bodhi between her and Cassian. 

“It’s okay - I’ll take this one,” she adds over the din of the music, settling down in the vacant chair next to Cassian. 

“I can leave, if you’d like me to,” Cassian whispers, barely audible over the crowd. Jyn lets her gaze find his, her eyes softening as she sees the worry in his eyes. 

“You’re not going anywhere. We’re at a party and we’re going to have a good time tonight because Shara and Kes asked us to and we’re both adults who can figure out how to co-exist, alright?” The smile that peeks out of the corners of Cassian’s mouth gives her a thrill, her hope building more with every minute. “Besides, I’ve always wondered if you inherited any dancing skills from your bloodline or if it was just all in my head. You’ll have to save me a dance.” 

“Sure, as long as you brought some crutches to help with all the broken toes I’ll give you,” he jokes and it’s so quick, so easy for him to respond with a moment of brightness, that Jyn is stunned by the man sitting beside her. 

Cassian hadn’t, in all the months they’d been together, been able to joke. Not really anyways. He’d been so morose, so pained, that every joke he let slip was self-depreciating and full of hurt and Jyn had been too lost to notice she’d been almost the same. But this - while still being critical of himself - was different. This was made with a laugh and a willingness to be poked fun at without him ending up dead in the end. It was progress that she only recognized because it was the same progress she’d made, back when she’d been struggling with her own demons. 

There was hope in this Cassian and Jyn would protect it with every breath she took. 

Dinner and the obligatory speeches run their course and soon the lights have dimmed and the music has turned up, the venue switching into almost a nightclub mode as the couple takes their first dance before their family and friends. When Bodhi and Luke get up to join the bodies making their way to the floor for a romantic tune, Jyn sits back in her chair and sighs. 

“How long have you been with Melshi?” Cassian asks after a moment, his elbows leaned forward on the table as he twists his glass between his fingers. 

“A couple months. But it’s probably not going to work out. We were like oil and water when I think about it now,” she answers with a shrug. Cassian glances back at her and then back to his hands, shifting in his seat. 

“I’m sorry about that. He was an interesting character when we were out in the field - competent and - “ 

“You don’t need to talk him up. We’re just not right and that’s okay. Just like us - sometimes it just isn’t going to work out, you know?” She adds softly and tries to avoid looking at the whiteness of his knuckles, the way he shakes out his hands and sits back in his seat. 

“Yeah. I guess you’re right,” he mumbles eventually. 

A silence spreads between them, though not uncomfortable it’s surely not the best thing she’s experienced as she sits and drinks her pop before nibbling once more at her dessert. 

When Bodhi comes to ask her to dance she sends a quick smile back to Cassian before she follows her friend out onto the floor. She hopes he understands that though she’d come to terms with them not being right for each other, it didn’t mean she didn’t consider him a possible friend. Someone she could rely on as she moved forward in this life, maybe not now but someday? She hoped. 

“You doing alright?” Bodhi asks once they’ve tucked themselves deep in the crowd, his concern evident on his face as they slowly start to dance. 

“Yeah - I mean, I have to be, right?” 

“You don’t - any other girl I know would probably have bailed on tonight if she’d had to deal with that situation - “ 

“It wasn’t that bad. Sure, Cassian actually showing up was a surprise but Scott being a dick was pretty par for the course at this point.” 

“Still. You handled it better than I would have,” he jokes and then sighs, his face showing the wear of a thousand lifetimes on it. “Do you think you’ll ever forgive him?” 

“Scott?” She slows her movements and looks at him, her brow tightening. 

“Obviously not Scott. I mean Cassian. Will you forgive him?” Bodhi asks with a hesitation in his words, a stuttering pause as he looks around them quickly. 

“What is there to forgive? We were both fucked up and we made mistakes. I can’t begrudge him for that and I’d be cruel to not acknowledge his recovery. He looks like he’s doing much better and I’m proud of him for finally getting help.” 

“Good. You should tell him sometime. I know he still thinks you blame him for things and maybe it would help if he heard that from you. Not tonight, obviously, but at some point.” 

“Bodes…” She sighs, resting her forehead against his shoulder as she tries not to think about the suggestion too deeply. She didn’t know if she was prepared for this conversation, this door to open and show her the things that lay beyond. 

“I know, I know. I said I wouldn’t get involved and I’m trying not to. I just know it would probably help, at some point, if you felt up for it. That’s all I’m saying. I’m sure it’d be good for you both if you talked it through too.” 

“Yeah. I’ll think about it, okay?” Bodhi nods at that and then smiles, breaking from the seriousness of the moment to start awkwardly dancing to the new beat blasting over the speakers. 

They go a few more songs together before Luke comes and steals Bodhi away, Jyn brushing her hair back with a wide smile as she tries to ignore the ache of her feet in her shoes. She knew better than to have worn them but they were the only things that went with her dress and she’d been desperate, she thought as she moved to the side of the crowd and reached down to start releasing the straps. With her heels in her hands, Jyn returns to the table where Shara and Kes are making the rounds and talking with Cassian. 

She hesitates on the periphery, watching as he smiles and makes wide gestures with his hands. He looks happy, she realizes, and the look of it is so good on him that she feels her chest ache with it. If he was happy, she could be too, and the understanding of that felt like a weight was being lifted from her. 

“Jyn! You came!” Shara shouts and steps by the men, coming around to hug Jyn tightly. “It’s so good to see you and you look hot!” 

“So do you! Tonight has been amazing. The food! Did you know you had them serving these cute little - “ 

“The toastas, yes! Weren’t they the best?” Shara says, nodding quickly and angling to bring Cassian and Kes into the circle. “I’m so glad you guys both came - Phillips couldn’t make it but she sent her regards. But it’s like we’re all here and we’re finally all doing better and I’m just - “ she brushes a hand over her brow as she gasps and her voice wavers. 

Jyn recognizes the moment and rests her hand on her friend’s shoulder, pulling her in for a hug as Kes moves to join them. 

“Get in here too,” Jyn grumbles to Cassian, reaching out a hand to drag him into the group hug. He moves slowly, reluctantly, before his arms stretch around them and his head tucks in close to hers. “Thank you guys - for everything,” Jyn mumbles and the hug tightens. 

“I’m so glad we’re all here,” Shara hiccups, slowly starting to draw back. Her hand lifts first to Jyn’s cheek and then to Cassian’s, her gaze following with affection. “It’s like seeing the other side of the tunnel for the first time, you know?” 

“Yes,” Cassian answers softly, his gaze flickering to Jyn’s briefly before moving away again. 

“We’ve gotta move on to the cousins table now. We’re glad you guys came, have a good night, alright?” Kes says after a moment, steering his new wife around Jyn and Cassian towards another group of people tucked in the corner. 

Jyn turns to Cassian then and watches as he shifts and looks towards her hands. 

“Heading home?” He asks, his finger reaching out and hooking in the straps of her shoes to lift her arm up. 

“I’ve still got time for those broken toes, if you’re feeling up to it?” She counters evenly, desperate to keep the want from bleeding through her voice. She didn’t want to force him, not if he wasn’t ready. 

“You’re sure?” He replies and the look on his face is hopeful, like someone being shown the future’s possibilities for the first time. 

“Come on,” she urges and tosses her shoes towards the table, her other hand taking hold of his and leading him out into the mass of bodies. 

They dance like no one is watching, moving to the beat of the music and twisting themselves into messy moves that would be embarrassing if she were to think anything of it. But she doesn’t - instead she gets lost in the feeling, the joy flickering through her finally starting to release itself as she floats across the floor. 

For the first time in years, Jyn feels like maybe she’s free of her baggage, that perhaps she’s finally found a life where she’s comfortable enough to be herself. There’s no second guessing who she is right now and it feels liberating to be at peace with herself. She knows she’s not cured, that she isn’t going to live happily ever after without struggle ever again, but in this moment she thinks that maybe it’s possible to finally move on and look at what comes next. When she looks at Cassian she sees her own happiness mirrored back at her and she can’t help the smile that cracks across her face as the music starts to slow. 

It’s Cassian who pauses and looks back towards the table, almost like he was planning an escape as the soft notes start to play over the speakers. Jyn simply reaches out a hand and brushes his fingers with her own, her smile gentle as he looks back at her with surprise. 

“For old times sake?” She asks evenly. Cassian gives her a look of surprise before he shakes it loose and moves towards her. They sway together for a moment, arms around one another as the music floats in the air. Jyn is the first to break the tentative silence, leaning back to catch his eyes. “I’m glad you’re here tonight,” she murmurs, watching as his eyes flit across her face, searching. “I didn’t say it earlier but you look good. You look better.” 

“I didn’t mean to make you think I was dead,” he says abruptly, gravel in his voice that makes her frown. “I got so lost out there and I didn’t want to keep hurting you. I’d already hurt you so much and I didn’t want to keep doing it.” 

“I don’t hold any of it against you, Cassian. You need to understand that.” 

“You don’t need to - “ 

“No, I need you to hear me if we’re going to be friends again. You aren’t allowed to blame yourself for what we did to each other when we were hurting. I’m not going to blame you, I’m not going to blame myself, and the same goes for you. You’ve got to trust that we’re going to be okay and not live in the past. If you can’t do that then I think you need to let Baze beat it into you some more - “ 

“Jyn,” Cassian intejects, laughing as he looks quickly around the room. “Is that how you got better? Taking the boxing program to the extreme?” He jokes, the understanding of her experience - so similar to his - making her smile. 

“Kind of. I’ve got a thick skull,” she chides in return. 

“It’s okay. At least it’s a pretty one,” Cassian mutters and glances back at her with a careful smile. “I’ll do my best to accept that. I’m still - I mean, I’m still working on it all, you know?” 

“Yeah, I do,” she answers lowly, tightening her embrace to rest her head on his shoulder. 

“Thank you,” he whispers eventually, their bodies pressed against one another as the song shifts and starts to build. It’s then that Jyn looks up and sees the softness in his gaze, the comfort that has settled over his face as she rocks side to side in his arms. 

She thinks then that maybe one day she could let herself love him again. That maybe at some point she could let him be to her what she’d always imagined him to be - a partner, a friend. Someone who held her as he did now, like she was fragile and he was gentle enough to keep her whole, like he was a home she could curl up in. 

The want for that flutters through her and she thinks he feels it too as he catches her gaze, his fingers lifting to her cheek and brushing strands of her hair back from her face. She’s the one who leans up and brushes their lips together, briefly, before she drifts to his cheek and leaves a kiss on the corner of his jaw. 

“I’m glad you’re alive, Cassian,” she breathes as his feet stop, his eyes closed when she looks up once more. He releases a shaky breath and then gently tucks her head into his shoulder, his arms wrapping around her and holding her as close as he can get her for a final dance. 

All around them bodies shift and move as the music ramps up, the floor vibrating with the jumping masses. Neither of them notice as they sway together, two souls recovering from a life that had torn them apart, their path forward finally allowing them some peace. 

When Jyn goes home that night she feels like the fresh wounds that she had borne since Scarif were finally closing, the last hole where Cassian had been now covered over with a soft skin. She was going to be okay, she was sure of it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is late! I had a heavy workload last week and I just could not finalize a few pieces of this chapter to get it out on time. Please forgive me for the delay!


	11. THREE YEARS POST

_ Cassian _

Cassian checks his seatbelt for the third time, his hands gripping the armrests as the plane increases its speed and starts to lift up into the sky. He hated take-offs - had never been comfortable with the push of the momentum on his skin or the rumble of the engines as they shivered through his bones. It wasn’t so much that he was scared of death, not after everything he’d been through, it’s just that it made everything feel so tentatively balanced on a thin string. 

No, Cassian didn’t like take-offs and maybe that’s why his palms were sweating. It definitely wasn’t because he was on his way to the field to offer a security training program. It was not at all because the operational team was based in a jungle setting, one similar in appearance to Scarif but miles safer. No. He wasn’t nervous because of those things. It had to be the take-off. 

Or it could be Jyn, who was already at the other end of this flight. 

He hadn’t seen her since the wedding. Sure, they talked regularly now a few nights a week, but they didn’t get together in person and for the first little while it was because he’d been too nervous to light a match near their shared gasoline. Lately though it was because she’d relocated across the country for work, a one-year contract with another organization bolstering their equipment readiness. He’d been happy for her but to say it hadn’t been a little bitter pill to swallow would be a lie. He missed her and that was really all of it. 

Maybe that’s why he’d agreed to get on the plane this morning - because Jyn was on the other end and going back out into the field didn’t seem so daunting if he had a friend who understood him while he was there. Maybe it was because he’d finally get to see in person that wide smile she’d developed these past few months, the one he’d only caught glimpses of when she first opened the video chats. There were a lot of maybe’s riding with him on this flight, apparently.

The plane eventually levels out and Cassian relaxes back into his seat, settling in for the long night flight across the ocean where he would do his best not to let the nerves for the mission, for Jyn, for anything really, get the best of him. 

* * *

“You look like shit, Andor,” a voice calls out to him as he grabs his bag from the carousel, his papers in his teeth as he tries to juggle his things without dropping them. When he looks up he nearly gives up, his papers falling to the floor as he recognizes the voice and sees that smile that had flickered in his dreams as of late. 

“Jyn - you look - ah shit,” he grumbles and drops his bags, grabbing his papers from the floor and standing back up just in time for Jyn to crash into his chest in a bone-crushing hug. He stumbles back a step with the impact before tightening his hold and wrapping his arms around her in return. “I’m sorry I smell - it’s been almost thirty hours - “ 

“I don’t care,” she whispers against him, her hold only tightening around his frame. “I’ve missed you so much - the new TL is a trip and I spend half of my days fixing her email. It’s such a tidy mess here. I’m so glad you came.” 

“Ah, so you’ve missed my calm and rational thought, I knew it,” he jokes as she slowly eases back, her eyes rolling. 

“Obviously that’s what I meant. It’s so good to - to see you again.” Cassian smiles at that and then reaches for his things, pulling his bag onto his back before standing up to show his readiness. “Right - let’s get going. We’ve still got about an hour to the office - or did you want to go to the hotel first?”

“I’d kill for a shower and a bed for an hour or two, if that’s alright,” he answers, following quickly after her as they head towards the exit. Outside the airport, the blast of milky heat hits him and he tries to shut down the memories that flood him, his hands tightening on his bags. It wasn’t Scarif. It wasn’t the same mission, the same people or the same conflict. It was different here and it would be okay. He had to keep remembering that for this to work - Chirrut had repeatedly reminded him a week before he’d left. 

“Definitely alright. This is Mahmoud, say hi,” Jyn instructs, dragging him back to the present as Mahmoud, their driver, opens the back of the van for his things. Cassian tosses his bags into the hold and turns to the man with a wide smile. He wasn’t Tivik - there was no resemblance, no similar colouring or features, they were completely different men. He was Mahmoud and everything was fine. 

“Hey, I’m Cassian,” he offers with a hand outstretched. The man takes it with a wide smile, nodding before moving back around to the front of the vehicle. Cassian and Jyn pile into the back as Jyn tells him all about the operation, how it was running too smoothly for her enjoyment, the work not as stimulating as she’d expected. He’d heard all of it before - the few calls they’d managed since she’d been out here reconfirming as much - but still he listened intently for anything he could draw on for his training in the coming days. 

“It’s good you’re here though because this team wouldn’t know fraud from the backside of a cow. They really need to get some exposure in a place with bigger risks.” 

“Not everyone is crazy like you,” Cassian chides, his elbow jabbing her side affectionately. “Some folks aren’t cut out for the high octane stuff and that’s fine.” 

“I know - I know. And maybe I’m just taking it personally because Bodhi wouldn’t let me take on a mission with a higher risk rating and so I’m touchy about that,” she sighs and Cassian realizes it’s the truth of the matter. He says a small silent thanks for Bodhi, certain that if Jyn had flung herself back into a warzone it would have likely been too soon. Maybe she could go back out there someday but right now it was still too fresh for either of them. They both knew it, Jyn just refused to admit it unless it was two in the morning and she was exhausted from jetlag and willing to confide her deepest secrets to him. 

They arrive at the hotel almost an hour later and Cassian feels the time change finally starting to catch up with him as the timezone at home dips further into the late evening hours. He spills out of the car and rubs his face, trying to rid himself of the exhaustion as they head towards the reception area. 

“Sorry - just ignore him, he’s tired. Can we just get his room key and we’ll deal with all that check out stuff later?” Jyn breaks into his attention, his gaze snapping back to where she’s talking with the front desk agent and negotiating his room details. He realizes then that he should be paying attention, his tiredness not an excuse for putting himself at risk even here where things were safer. 

“I’ve got it,” he grumbles, leaning against the counter and looking up at the man with his mouth open. He struggles to find the words and Jyn sighs, pushing him back so she can finish making his arrangements for him. 

“Get your stuff, we’ll get you upstairs and once you’re safely tucked inside, I’ll head back to the office.” Cassian does what she says, pulling his bag back onto his shoulders and drawing on all of his strength to stay upright as Jyn settles things with the agent. When she turns to look at him she shakes her head and takes one of his bags, leading them towards the elevator. “You’re in 304. Just down the hall from me so I’ll pick you up in the morning at eight - eat breakfast in the cantina if you can. We’ve gotta be in the office at quarter to nine, alright? I’ll tell Mothma you’ve got food poisoning or something from the food on the plane.” 

“You don’t have to do that,” he answers as they step into the elevator. It takes a painfully long amount of time to climb to the third floor, the creak of the old metal sounding around them. 

“Sure I do. I’m trying to salvage your reputation here. Let me do what I know is best,” she quips just as the elevator rings and the doors slide open. She stalks down the hall towards his room and pauses at a door, tapping quickly on the number. “Room 315 is mine. Don’t take advantage of it,” she jokes and then continues down the hallway. 

He has to work to push away the inappropriate thoughts that steamroll into him then at her joke, his eyes drifting too often to her hands or the curve of her hair around her face. Cassian watches raptly, embarrassingly, as she makes quick work of sliding the key into the lock and pushing open the door to his room. Inside she sets his bag down gently on the desk and then rests her hands on her hips, her cheeks flushed from the movement. 

“Looks nice enough,” he says as he steps into the room. The walls are stained from the moisture but the bed is wide and clean looking, the air con slowly blowing cool air into the space. He could - would - be comfortable here. 

“Good. I’m glad it’s Cassian approved. I know he’s got high standards what with that fancy skyscraper apartment and all,” she counters brightly. Cassian chuckles at the joke and sets his things down, determined not to focus on the way she twists uneasily before him. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow then?” He says over the din of the fan, his own hands fidgeting as he realizes he’s been caught looking her over. She looked good - strong and bright eyed, her hair pulled back in its usual low bun with her bangs brushed aside. She looked like the girl he met all those years ago, eager and ready to fight for the cause, and he couldn’t help but feel the echo of their history hanging in the air around them. 

“Yes. Eight. Make sure you eat and I’ll see you then,” she answers quickly before stepping past him, her movements too stiff to be understood as anything but forced. He watches as she reaches for the handle, pulling open the door before turning around to look at him once more. “I know you had hesitations about coming out here, going back into the field after everything that happened, but I just wanted to tell you that I’m happy you’re here. And that I’m - well, I’m proud of you for trying again. I’m proud of you, Cassian.” 

She doesn’t wait for a response, yanking open the door and disappearing out into the hallway as he’s left stunned by her comments. It takes him a long time after that to focus enough to find his way to the shower, the cold water running over him and washing the confusing feelings from his soul as he scrubs himself clean. 

* * *

The first day of training gets off the ground with a rocky start as Cassian is slow to find his footing as he tries out new presentation ideas with the diverse group. The team that was assembled was from the four corners of the earth, Alliance leads from almost every continent jumbled up with actors from other agencies and volunteers who played key social outreach roles. He’d tried to take all of this into consideration when he’d started building the program but the variables had been too wide to truly address the issue properly and though he tried, there were definitely moments when his jokes didn’t fly and he had to shoot Jyn a panicked look that always seemed to signal a rebut in her own dry manner.

Thankfully though, nobody really seemed to hold it against him. They were a quiet group who hesitated to share, their stories slim and told with nervous looks around at their peers, the feelings seemingly removed from their retelling. 

“You know, you should tell them about yourself. Maybe it’ll help warm them up to you,” Jyn says over lunch, her heels tapping against the table legs where she’s perched herself, a spoon between her lips as she eats a cup of yogurt and fruit. Cassian tries not to look at her knowing full and well how the sight of it would probably cause his brain to short circuit. 

“Or it’ll make them think I’m unqualified,” he answers instead, dropping activity cards on each of the tables as he tries to think through options to salvage the day. 

“I don’t think that’s how it works. You’ve got street cred here - even Mothma thinks it. She said Draven told her he couldn’t think of anyone better suited to run this than you.” Cassian throws her a withering look, his old technical lead making his stomach churn. 

When everything had gone to shit, Dravan had been one of the first to doubt his return to work. He’d been critical and cutting, speaking up in Cassian’s interview and backhandedly telling him and everyone in the room that he wouldn’t be able to cut it as a full-time staff at HQ. Thankfully there’d been others at the table - Leia, Luke’s sister, to name one who’d thrown her support behind him. Cassian had tried to thank her afterwards but she’d brushed it off, one of Bodhi’s comments about the Guardian Centre coming back to him at that time -  _ Luke’s brother-in-law got clean here _ . He hadn’t pushed and despite the verbal condemnation of the moment, he’d still managed to get the job. Hearing Jyn say Draven spoke highly of him sounded far fetched, even for her. 

“It’s true! I saw the email because we both know that’s my one solid skill set here,” she continues and Cassian sighs, looking up at her as he comes back to the front of the room. 

“He tried to convince them not to hire me when I came in for this job. Are you sure it wasn’t a scam?” He asks evenly, his gaze falling to the floor as he leans against the table. 

“Hundred P. Tell them who you are and why they’ve put you in this room. Make them understand your story - that’s how it works here. They value what people have done, not their titles.” He glances up at her and finds her looking at him with a measured gaze, the spoon tucked between her lips. She holds his gaze for a second before she pulls the spoon out with a pop and jumps off the table to start backing towards the hallway. “Think about it. I’m going to go get you a sandwich and let you figure out your next move, Captain.” 

“ _ Ha _ ,” he calls and rubs his face, looking around the table at the supplies he’s prepared and the room he’s set up. 

In a snap decision, Cassian begins pushing the tables together and moving chairs around the room, changing the dynamic from a classroom lecture into more of a collaborative learning space. When the furniture is settled he turns to his notebook and scribbles down a few notes before picking up a post-it pad and writing four key words down that he posts on the walls. 

When the class returns half an hour later there’s a hum of excitement for the first time as everyone settles once more into their seats. 

“We’re switching things up. We’re going to start with a little game - what do you want to get out of this session? There’s four spots up on the walls and when I say ‘go’ I want you to join the spot that resonates the most with why you’re here. We’ll discuss some of the answers after and figure out how we can meet your expectations. Ready? Go.” 

Cassian watches as they slowly get back to their feet, moving around the room and looking at the options as they go. When the horde passes by him he doesn’t miss the small squeeze of a hand around his, Jyn’s goofy grin lighting up her expression as she follows the people from her table. Settling the room down takes more than he’d expected but Cassian thinks it’s a good thing as the group gets more comfortable, sharing their reasons and their thoughts on what they can take away from the week. 

“That’s excellent, thank you Aly. Now - if everyone can find their seats again,” he pauses and then settles himself against the table, looking out at the group as their attention slowly focuses back on him. “I think I got off on the wrong foot today by not explaining why  _ I’m _ the one delivering this course and not someone else. So - if you’ll bear with me for a bit, I’d like to share my experiences.” 

The class turns silent and Jyn gives him a subtle thumbs up under the table as he starts relaying his years of field work and the missions he’d taken in progressively more risky locations. When he gets to Scarif he works hard not to let his voice waver, his recount of what happened making the people in the room shift uncomfortably in their chairs. 

“It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do and recovering from it, learning how to live after it, was something that has taken me a long time to figure out. And so I’m here today because I’ve been through some of the worst and I understand how daunting it can be to figure out what comes next. I’ve designed this course around how to avoid things like what happened to me and my team but I’ve also designed it to address how to come back from those things. This room is a place where I hope you can feel comfortable to ask questions, to learn from my mistakes and to understand how even when you don’t make any mistakes, even when you’ve done everything right, you’ll still have things go wrong. And that’s okay because that’s life. As long as you can make it to the other side, you’ll be alright again. So, who’s ready to actually get started now?”

When the hands of the entire room lift into the air, Cassian can’t stop the smile from breaking across his face. 

* * *

“You know today is prep for simulation, right?” Cassian says over breakfast, his eyes watching as Jyn digs into her noodles, her head barely coming up for air. He couldn’t blame her - the team had gone out for drinks last night and though neither of them had imbibed, the late night out had surely taken its toll on them both as they woke with very few hours of sleep under their belts. 

“I do,” she says in between bites, reaching for the hot sauce and nearly growling when Cassian tugs it back towards him to get her to look up from her bowl. 

“It’s breakfast,” he laughs as the murderous look fills her brow. 

“I have never once cared what time of day it is when I’m eating food,” she says darkly, yanking the bottle back towards her and dumping another few drops into her broth. 

“Fine. Fine. But I want you to pay attention to me, for a minute at least,” he adds lightly and Jyn pauses, her head cocking to the side as she looks up at him. 

“Is that not what I’m doing now? You’re so needy, Cassian,” she pokes, her lips turning up in a ghost of a smile. He loves that smile, he thinks, his mind growing foggy as she eventually waves a hand in front of his face. “Earth to Cassian - you have my attention now and you’re wasting it!” 

“Sorry - I just - nevermind. As I was saying, it’s simulation prep day. We have an activity where you’re placed in a position of submission and we put a bag over your head. I wanted to offer you an out - you could help me run the activity or we can just do you last and then not actually go through with it. What do you think?” 

“I’m glad you remember I like equity in my kinks,” she teases, lifting her noodles once more to her lips. Cassian reaches out his hand and grabs her wrist, drawing her focus back up to him as his brow tightens. 

“Be serious for a minute right now, okay? I’m trying to take care of you,” he says softly, surprised when she sets down her chopsticks and sits up straighter, her attention finally fully on him. “I know you’ve got a thing about the dark and with Scarif and everything - I don’t want it to cause issues for you. It’s an optional activity that you don’t have to complete if you don’t want to.” 

“Is anyone else opting out?” She asks, her jaw tightening. 

“One other participant has opted to assist instead of participate, at least at the start. Nobody else has indicated any concerns but I figured you probably just skipped that question on the questionnaire.” 

“Can I go last? And if it’s too much or - “ 

“No questions asked, Jyn. You can withdraw at any point.” 

“Okay. Then let’s do that,” she answers with a shrug, reaching for her chopsticks again and dipping them into her bowl. She pauses once more and then glances up at him, a small smile on her lips. “Thank you for caring enough to ask.” 

“Anytime,” he replies and the moment turns tight, like a band is squeezing around them as Cassian’s fingers graze her wrist for another second before he slowly draws his hand back. “Anyways - as attractive as you are slurping that breakfast soup, I’ve got a few things I need to get from my room. I’ll meet you in the lobby in fifteen?” She nods and waves her chopsticks at him as he gets to his feet before she turns back to her meal. 

The day flies by as the group dives into their morning sessions, their excitement for the discussion and changing content making Cassian bring more to the table, the feedback loop between his pupils and his teaching style working in overdrive. When it’s time to introduce the final activity for the day, Cassian makes sure to explain everything clearly including offering a demonstration with one of the volunteers so that people could opt out if they aren’t comfortable. Only Jyn and the other participant hesitate, hanging at the back of the queue as slowly individuals are bagged and led into an open room where they’re lowered to their knees. 

By the time Cassian reaches Jyn she’s got her arms locked over her chest, her expression frozen in a mask of indifference. Cassian tries not to recognize it but knows it's the one she wears when she doesn’t know how to process what she’s feeling, a clear indication of her clamming up. 

“Yes or no?” He asks softly, barely loud enough for anyone else to hear. Jyn looks at him and clenches her jaw, her head giving a swift nod before she steps into the room. Cassian gives her another second to back out, to choose differently, before he lifts the black bag and slides it over her head. 

His hand rests on her shoulder, heavy and squeezing to remind her that he’s there as he leads her to where the rest of the participants are already kneeling on the ground. 

“Down,” he hisses, his hand pressing on her shoulder and guiding her slowly down to her knees. 

As soon as she’s down Cassian looks around the room for flags, for the tell-tale signs of immediate stress in any of them as he starts the timer on his watch. Slowly, carefully, he walks the room and stomps on the floor, jumping near some of the participants to show them how the lack of sight elevates their fight or flight response. He pushes the boundaries and it’s only when he comes back to Jyn’s side of the room that he catches sight of the way she’s practically shaking under her hood. Her nails have dug into her palms and her fingers have spread blood across her hands, the anxious movements making Cassian internally panic. He’d missed it - he’d fucked up and now she was getting lost in the sim and he should have stopped it - 

Cassian forces himself to take a steadying breath as he locks down his raging thoughts, his mind focusing on what he needed to do now to fix things before they got too out of hand. 

Dropping to his knees in front of her, Cassian yanks the bag from her head and cups her cheeks in his hands to force her to look at him. She opens her eyes and the tears threaten to spill, her breathing coming in short bursts as she tries to reclaim control of herself. In another second he’s grabbed her hand and has lifted it to his chest, holding it there.

“Follow my breathing, in - out,” he repeats and she gasps, blinking away the tears and slowly breaking through the mask once again. She comes back from the edge, her eyes locked on his as she forces herself to breathe through the adrenaline flooding her body. “That’s good. A few more deep breaths okay?” He stays centered on her for another few seconds before he looks around at the rest of the class before looking back to her. “I’m going to get everyone else up. You should go wash up, okay?” 

Jyn looks down at her hands then, sighing and getting quickly to her feet before scrambling out of the room. She rejoins the group silently a few minutes later as they’re sharing their experiences, the panic and tears echoing through multiple individual’s recounts as they all recall trying to stay calm and fight their instincts. Cassian lets the tremor from the activity run through the group before he releases them for the day, reminding them that if anyone had difficulty throughout the night they could give him a call. 

“I probably shouldn’t have participated but if I think about it now, it wasn’t as bad as I expected,” Jyn says as she helps him tidy up, the room having emptied quickly with the promise of dinner for the other participants. 

“You’re stubborn, Jyn, but it’s probably saved you more than it’s hindered you, so I can’t blame you for it,” he answers lightly, his hands busy wiping the whiteboard down for the night. Distracted, he doesn’t feel her come up behind him until her arms have looped around his waist and she’s tucked her head against his spine. 

“Thank you for being there, for knowing what to do. It made it easier,” she whispers into his shirt, holding on for another second longer before drawing back. When he turns to look at her he has to fight the urge to pull her into his arms, his fists tightening around the rag in his hand before he tosses it back on the table. 

A thousand things fly to the tip of his tongue, all of them inappropriate for the relationship they now had. They were friends and friends didn’t say things like  _ mi amor _ or  _ eres quien me da cobijo - no hay nadie en quien confíe más.  _ He wanted to, but he couldn’t say them, and so Cassian fights the urge and plasters a smile on his face, turning the conversation back to the one thing he knew they both understood. 

“Let’s go get dinner. We’ve got a big final day tomorrow and I know I, personally, want to get some actual  _ maldito _ sleep.” 

* * *

Simulation day is exhausting - the amount of factors that Cassian’s team of volunteers have put into the day almost beyond comprehension as they move from one experience to the other. All throughout the passing hours, Cassian focuses on giving direct feedback to the participants, breaking the sim to help them learn in the moment and sometimes letting it continue on uninterrupted so that they can experience the building pressure of the day.

When the final attack comes, Cassian watches from the back of the room as the volunteers bag and bind everyone, making them stand up and cling to one another's backs as they’re led to the final station. He keeps a close eye on them all, looking for the signs of panic that the group had explained yesterday, even walking next to Jyn at one point to check her breathing before looping back to the front of the pack. 

The group is left in the dark for almost half an hour, some being poked and prodded by the volunteers and some being dragged away to sit in a silent room on their own. All throughout the movement of the participants, Cassian keeps tabs on Jyn as she’s moved inside and out, his quiet words to her assigned volunteer checking on how she was responding and if she was showing any concerning signs. Not once does her volunteer indicate that she needed to be pulled from the activity and Cassian tries not to let it worm its way into his worry, instead trying desperately to focus on the operation as a whole. 

Outside the group is set in a row for their release, their hands clipped free from their bindings as the bags are removed from their heads. Cassian stands off to the side as some of them lean forward on their hands, others turning to their neighbour and hugging them as they start to break from the stress of the day. He lets his eyes move along the line until he finds Jyn still locked with her arms behind her back, her spine rigid as she keeps her eyes shut. She wasn’t crying, thankfully, nor was her brow tight with pain, but the worry blossomed within him anyways as he waited for her to snap back from her own mind. He’s halfway to where she’s still frozen on the ground when Mothma rests her hand on his shoulder, her eyes understanding as she turns to Jyn and kneels down before her. 

Cassian watches as the woman speaks slowly to Jyn, Mothma’s hand resting on Jyn’s shoulder as she finally opens her eyes and looks at the woman in front of her. She says something lowly to the woman and then closes her eyes again, Mothma getting slowly to her feet and coming over to stand beside him. 

“She’s talking herself down and has asked us to give her another minute. I’d like to wait her out, if that’s alright with you?” Mothma asks softly, her gaze flickering up to his for a moment. 

He feels her searching, examining him as he fights against his instinct to swoop in and snap Jyn out of whatever hell she’s in, but Mothma’s presence forces him to come back to himself as Jyn’s instructor, as someone who needed to let her figure it out on her own for all of the times he wouldn’t be there to pull her back from the edge. And so he stands with his hands clenched behind him in fists, his own memories of Scarif prickling at the back of his mind as Jyn’s brow tenses, as her shoulders roll and her lips thin. 

“There she is,” Mothma says after a moment, recognizing as Jyn’s shoulders shake out and her hands flex and drop into the grass in front of her. In another second she’s pushing herself to her feet, a proud smile peeking from the corners of her lips as she scans the crowd and finally finds him watching her. Her smile widens and Cassian feels himself relax, his whole body loosening from the tension he’s felt all day as he worried about her and how she would react to this final test. “May I walk with you a moment, Andor?” Mothma asks as Jyn turns to one of her peers and breaks his gaze. 

“Of course,” he answers and turns to follow the woman as she heads back towards the classroom. 

“I’d like to tell you I’m very impressed with what you’ve done here this week. The content obviously suits your skill set and I plan on ensuring that everyone back at HQ is aware of the work you’ve done,” she pauses and turns to face him fully, her eyes on the door over his shoulder. “I’m quite aware that HQ has a habit of sending me the individuals they’re unsure can hack field work because the post is not as challenging as some of the other regions. What that means is that I wasn’t surprised when Draven was pushing to have you sent here, based on the history I’ve been informed of. My station is basically where people come to be vetted for other operations or I have the unfortunate task of cutting them from the field.” 

“That’s a difficult situation to be in, I’d imagine,” he answers evenly, unsure where this conversation was going to go.

“It has its difficulties, yes. But it also has its benefits. I’d say getting to vet both you and Jyn Erso has been one of the benefits. While my recommendation won’t be to place you two back in the field together due to your current relationship - “

“Ma’am, it’s not - “ 

“No - I’m aware. But whatever it is, it would complicate things and you know as well as I do how that works in the field. I  _ will _ be recommending though, that she continue her postings abroad to gain more experience and that you continue leading security trainings and performing advisory work both in the field and back at HQ. The Alliance would be unfortunate to lose either of you due to what’s happened in your past.” Cassian takes that in with a measured breath, his shoulders relaxing as he watches Mothma smile back up at him. “You’ve done excellent work, Cassian. I’ll be sure that it’s known beyond any of the rumours about your previous missions.” 

“Thank you. I’m not sure you understand how much I appreciate having you in my corner,” he answers lowly, a smile slowly growing on his face. “And thank you for - for giving us another chance. For everything you’ve done for her.” 

“I haven’t done much - she’s really quite resilient of her own accord.” 

“Oh believe me, I know,” he says with a laugh, his hand brushing his hair back from his face as he tries not to give away all of their secrets to one of Mothma’s knowing stares. 

“Good. Then I’ll see everyone at dinner this evening for the wrap up. Do you head out tomorrow?” She asks with a lifted brow, watching him closely. 

“I’ve got a full day of leave tomorrow and then my flight is the day after. Figured it would be good to add a buffer in case any of my flights were delayed on the way out here.” 

“Excellent. Our office is closed tomorrow but if you require any assistance venturing around town, I’m sure one of the staff could give you some advice on some of the worthwhile spots.” Cassian nods at that and shakes off the thought that Mothma was implying more than he was ready to admit. 

So maybe he hadn’t been paranoid about the flights - not really anyways. Maybe he’d thought it would be nice to add in a day of checking out the city, a day to relax somewhere new. He’d never admit out loud that the thought of having a spare day to sightsee with Jyn had wavered temptingly in his mind as he’d booked his flights. 

No. Certainly he had definitely only booked the extra day for unrelated reasons. But if Jyn was off, and she did want to explore with him, he wouldn’t turn her away. 

* * *

Dinner quickly becomes a riotous affair for the group as they take over a private room in a restaurant down the road from the hotel. The delicious food offerings available make Cassian’s mouth water as he tries one of everything before pulling up a chair at the long table set family style for them. 

“Can I sit here?” Jyn asks, her hand hovering over the chair across from him. Sometime between the sessions wrapping up and dinner, Jyn had gone and changed into a black t-shirt and jeans that fit too well  _ not _ to notice and Cassian internally scolded himself for the appraising look he let flicker over her.

“Of course,” he answers, unable to stop the smile that pulls at his lips as he looks back at his plate. He was desperately trying to fight off the desire to pull her aside and tell her how proud he was, even pointedly leaving the training venue before she could finish celebrating with her peers so he could have a clear escape. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to congratulate her or tell her what she deserved to hear. It was that he didn’t trust himself to stop the words that would likely spill from his throat once he started. The feelings from when they’d been together before hadn’t really gone away - not in the whole time they’d been apart. Sure, they’d become healthier, less dependent and more healed, but the love was still there, pulsing like hot coals in his chest. He’d worked hard to keep them clamped down but since the wedding and the friendship they’d started to build, he knew it was likely inevitable that the whole fire inside of him would rekindle if given the chance. 

Cassian was certain though that this was not the place or the time for him to voice those thoughts and had since been trying to keep them locked away even though it went against all of his instincts. He didn’t want to spoil her success or the mission and he definitely did not want to threaten the careful groundwork they’d laid and so Cassian did what he needed to do and kept his mouth shut. 

He worked hard to keep his distance through dinner, and through the cheesy awards the group awarded to each other, and even after as the drinks came out and everyone but him and Jyn seemed to delve into inebriation. He tried but he could only do so much to try to keep himself in check as he felt the toe of a boot connect with his shin under the table, his eyes snapping up with surprise and finding Jyn watching him with a mischievous look in her eye. 

“What?” He mouths as one of the participants starts an embarrassing rendition of some pop song he barely recognizes. Jyn tilts her chin quickly towards the door and gets up, making her way around the table and towards the exit. Cassian tries to stay - to keep his knees locked and his butt in his chair - but the urge to follow her overwhelms him and he excuses himself from the table with an excuse to find the washrooms. 

Outside the room he half expects her to ambush him, surprise and confusion floundering within his chest as he looks up and down the hall to find it empty but for a swinging door that leads to the closed rooftop patio. He takes the few steps towards the door and pauses to suck in a breath before grabbing the handle and stepping through. Jyn hovers at the edge of the deck, leaning over the railing and watching the city below as he moves to rest on the railing next to her. 

For a drawn out moment neither of them speak and Cassian half-thinks maybe he’d gotten his cues confused, his gaze flickering over to her once, twice as she shifts and chews on her lip. It’s only on the third - maybe fifth glance - that she turns fully towards him and he moves to mimic her movements, his hip pressing into the cool metal as she watches him. 

“You’ve been avoiding me all afternoon. I find it annoying,” she states easily, forcing his gaze to settle on hers. 

“I didn’t want to get in the way of your celebration,” he answers, stuffing the rest of his words into the back of his throat as his fingers fidget nervously. 

“You’re taking away my autonomy to celebrate with you - why? Was it something Mothma said when you talked with her after?” 

“No. That’s not - Jyn, it was my choice to give you some space. I didn’t want to get in your way or interfere with the team you’ve got here. I’m your instructor and your fri - “ 

Her lips cut off his words, her fingers twisting in the front of his shirt as she crowds in close and steals his breath. When she pauses, pulling back barely an inch, Cassian feels his whole body buzz with want and nerves and a mess of feelings crowding into his mind all at once. 

“That was how I wanted to celebrate with you,” she whispers, her eyes catching his. In one look, Cassian can see the trust, the desire and the strength shining back at him - all of the things that had been there the first time but had flickered out in the months after Scarif. They were back, stronger, and he felt for the first time that maybe they were on the same footing now, that perhaps this was where they would have been had everything not happened like it had. When she begins to lower back down from the balls of her feet, the distance between them increasing, Cassian can’t help himself as he lifts his hands to her chin and chases her lips with his own. 

The kiss is hesitant, seeking, and Cassian wants it to last longer but pulls back as his doubts get the best of him. He stays close, his eyes closed while his thumbs brush against her cheeks and he moves slowly from one foot to the other, debating whether to pull back or not. 

“Why are you stopping?” She asks against his lips, her forehead pressed against his and her palms covering the backs of his hands, holding him to her. 

“I’m scared,” he answers truthfully and briefly wonders if she can feel the way his body vibrates with it. She must because a hand lifts to his temple and curves around the shell of his ear before resting on the back of his neck. 

“You’re Cassian Andor. Nothing scares you.” He snuffs out a laugh and bumps their noses together, unwilling to release her just yet. 

“You do. Losing you - as a, a friend - as - “ 

“Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t want this - if I wasn’t afraid of losing you too?” She counters gently, her hand brushing at the hair along his brow and forcing him to look at her. Jyn’s eyes lock on his, the green startlingly clear in the low light. “We could have died but we didn’t. We could have decided never to talk again or chosen to go our own way but we didn’t. Cassian, we’ve both chosen this - why hesitate now?” 

“Because I love you,” he exhales, leaving the rest of it unsaid.  _ And I don’t want you to not love me back. I don't want to live without you _ . 

“Cassian,” she sighs with a scattered laugh, her hands tightening on where she holds him to her. “Love is for the brave.” 

She doesn’t wait for him to answer, her arms wrapping around his neck as she draws him into her embrace. He’s nearly bent over her small frame as he gives in to her demands, his body pliant as she seeks his lips to deepen the kiss further. He’s breathless when he tucks her into the dark corner of the patio, his body pressed to hers and his grip holding her close to him as they explore and let their hands wander. His memory serves up the kiss from Scarif, the quick flash of it in the hallway, and all of the feelings he’d wanted to act on then come roaring back like a tidal wave. 

“Jyn - there’s someone here I’d like you to meet, if you wouldn’t mind?” Mothma’s voice rings out across the deck and Cassian freezes, his fingers stopping their path up the skin of her ribs. 

“Be right there,” Jyn calls back, her heaving breaths being forced to slow as she starts unwrapping herself from around him. He drops his hands and watches as she brushes her hair back into place before stepping around him and disappearing back towards the door. 

He waits another minute for the area to clear before he lets his shoulders relax and his hands dip into his pockets, his gaze turning up towards the night sky as he exhales a shaky breath. 

“You’d benefit from meeting her as well, Cassian,” Mothma says, startling him as he jumps and turns to face her with wide eyes. “Don’t worry - I’ll just assume you were both stargazing. I’ll see you inside in a few minutes.” 

* * *

“I was annoyed because I’d already  _ met _ Leia,” Jyn whines, her arm linked in his as they walk the short distance back to the hotel. “It’s not like she’s going to make or break my career when her family basically paid for my rehab.” 

“I didn’t know that,” he admits, glancing towards her before quickly looking away. They never talked about their time at the Guardian Centre, not in detail anyways, and so the news that the Skywalker/Organa clan had been an integral part of it for her caught him off guard. 

“Yeah - Luke felt bad for me and I couldn’t afford it so he just... Paid for it. We don’t talk about it though and he won’t take any repayment money from me. Kinda adds another layer of ‘don’t fuck this up’ this time, you know?” 

“I do. Maybe I should have thanked her more then, since she played a part in… You being here, I guess,” Cassian replies carefully, treading on uncharted territory. 

“You’ll get to at Luke and Bodhi’s wedding. Get to fawn over all of the Organa’s all at once,” She says on a sigh, leaning her head against his shoulder. “You did know about the wedding, right? I didn’t just spill the beans on his big announcement?” 

“Don’t worry - Bodhi called me before I left with the news. You’re not the weakest link,” he adds as they hover outside the hotel doors. Jyn takes a second to disengage from his embrace, pulling back and brushing her hands nervously through her hair before looking up at him. This was where they needed to part ways - if they were really going to part ways after everything at dinner.

“Good. Since that might be the next time we see each other again, I wanted to be sure you’d be there,” she admits lowly, looking away across the street and then back up to him. Her hands have looped around her waist and he can’t help but notice how she chews on the inside of her cheek when she’s nervous, her jaw constantly moving like she wanted to say something else but couldn’t find the words. 

“I will - be there, I mean,” he pauses and rubs his chin, his own brain struggling to gather the courage to say something,  _ anything _ , so the night wouldn’t end. He felt like he was back in Scarif, letting her slip through his fingers once more. “You know - I don’t have a flight until Sunday. Did you maybe want to go see some of the city tomorrow? There’s a - “ 

“Yes. I do. With you, yes,” she replies and when she takes a breath her whole body seems to inflate with it, her arms coming loose to let her hands rest on her hips, her expression settling into a challenging smile. “I would also like it if we spent the night together as well. Tonight. If you felt like that would be okay for you. I understand if not but - “ 

“Yes.  _ Dios, si, _ ” he whispers and Jyn nods as the tension snaps, dropping her arms and grabbing his hand to pull him towards the elevator before either of them change their minds. 

They wait patiently for the doors to open, the backs of their hands brushing as they edge closer together. When the doors to the metal box eventually do shut it’s like a magnet has come alive and dragged them together. Cassian crowds her into the corner as his lips find hers, his hands reclaiming the space on her ribs where they’d left off at the restaurant. Jyn is the one to pull away when the elevator beeps for their floor, her hand capturing his as she leads him out into the hallway. 

Cassian is pulled to a stop before he’s reached his room, confusion prickling his brow. 

“I figured we would go to mine - in case - I mean, in the event you want to - “ 

“Leave? Like I used to?” She asks softly, her gaze understanding and hinting at regret. 

“Yes,” he breathes, watching her for any signs that his bringing up their painful issues from the past was too much for the moment. He hadn’t wanted to create a division but he wanted to be cognizant of it too, afraid that if he tricked himself into thinking things were totally different he was bound to get hurt when they weren’t. 

“I’ve actually - I worked on that. I, um, that was one of the things I worked through, with Chirrut, I mean. So, if you wanted - I guess, I’d like you to stay with me, here, tonight. But only if you want?” She adds in a stalling way, her voice wavering as she looks up at him. 

_ Love is for the brave _ .

Her words from earlier ring in his head and he lifts his hand to her chin, tilting her head up so he can capture her lips with his own. He pours all of the forgiveness and love that he can into his kiss, holding her to him lightly despite the way he practically shakes with nerves and want. 

They make it into her room and Cassian tells himself to move slowly, to savour her touch and her taste because he doesn't know if this will ever happen again, but Jyn has other ideas and doesn't hesitate to pull his shirt over his head. He follows her moves and yanks hers loose, his hands dropping to the fastening of her jeans that she wiggles quickly out of. Jyn is the one to hop up onto the desk in the room, dragging him towards her and never breaking contact. Without question he falls to his knees before her and slips her underwear from her hips, his nose skimming the bareness of her thigh. He reaches the scar on her hip and he mouths at it, his hands touching, searching everywhere as he remembers her body and all of the places that make her sing.

"Cassian," she moans, her fingers tangled in his hair and gently pulling him up to her. He fights and sinks back lower, hands guiding her legs apart as he tugs her towards the edge of the wood. He buries his face in the hair between her thighs, easing a finger down to part her nether lips as he flicks his tongue over her clit. She nearly shouts as her legs tighten for a moment before he deepens his ministrations. A finger slips inside, then two, as he teases with lips and tongue and hot breaths along her center. 

Above him Jyn writhes, tugging at his hair and rolling her hips to deepen the pressure of his mouth. When she comes against him it’s like a wave crashing into shore, her legs wrapping around him and her body tightening like a bow about to break. His fingers help her ride out the orgasm as he slowly moves back to standing, his mouth dragging along her skin and lighting small fires along her belly, her chest and up to her neck. 

“I don’t think I can make it to the bed,” she whispers as he nuzzles into her collar, his thumb running tight circles on her nub as his fingers tease the wetness around her entrance. 

“S’okay,” he murmurs against her skin, his hot breath making the gooseflesh pebble. 

“No, I want to see you. I want to make you feel good too,” she worries into his ear and Cassian chuckles, grasping her wrist and dragging her palm down to the front of his jeans where his length presses insistently against the fabric. 

“You are,  _ mi amor _ .” Jyn growls and squeezes her hand, making him rut instinctively into her palm. 

“Bed, Cassian,” she commands and this time he doesn’t fight her, easing back to help her from the desk and towards the mattress on shaky legs. Where he half expects her to tumble down, she stands steady and wraps her arm around his neck, pulling herself up to his level for a deep kiss. 

Distracted by the feel of her, the smell of her surrounding him, Cassian barely notices that she’s released the button on his jeans and is easing the fabric down his legs. When she breaks the kiss he feels lightheaded and on fire and he doesn’t for one moment pause as she pushes his shoulders down until he’s collapsed onto the edge of the mattress. Jyn straddles his hips then, returning her mouth to his as she drags her wetness over his length. He nearly comes apart at the touch, his body aching to feel her on him, around him.

“I’ve got your size this time, if you want them,” she murmurs, her hips rolling against his lap and teasing her entrance with his tip. 

“I’ve been tested but if you still - “ 

“No. I’m clean too - got tested before I came out. I trust you. I want just you,” she interjects and the next pass of her hips almost has him sinking into her heat, his body vibrating with need as his hands flutter against her sides. They kiss for another drawn out moment before Jyn sighs and drops her hand between them, guiding him inside of her for the first time in so long. 

He moans at the warmth, at her tightness, as she moves slowly on top of him. He lets her set the pace, his palms grazing her nipples before dropping one hand to circle her clit with his fingers. She whimpers at the pressure and her hips buck reactively, her whole body coming alive at the press and pull of his hands on her skin. 

“ _ Te extrañé. Te extrañé mucho, mi amor _ ,” he whispers as she ducks to capture his lips, the kiss slow and searching as her breasts rub against the hair on his chest. He lets his hands drift back up her sides to bracket her face, holding her to him as she slows the roll of her hips on him. They shift together and all the hurry from before, the tangled clothes and the quick breaths seems to disappear as they move together like they were fragile things so scared of being broken. 

Cassian revels in the contact, in her closeness, as she sighs and moans against his skin. His heart beats heavily in his chest, the pounding sound of it making him lightheaded as his body tightens with his impending release. He’s so dizzy with it all that he doesn’t notice her sliding to the side, dragging him with her until he’s pulled on top, still joined with his hips resting between her legs. 

In all of the times that they had been together since that first time, Cassian always gave her the power - he knew her issues, her fears, and he’d had no argument to make in letting her take control if it made her more comfortable. But now she was giving the control back to him, trusting him to not hurt her, trusting him to be in control of her body, and the realization made him hesitate. 

“Jyn?” He whispers, his fingers grazing her cheek as she opens her eyes. He remembers vividly that last time, when she’d pretended it was okay even though it wasn’t. Was this like that? Was he going to inadvertently push her away again if he went through with this? 

“I love you, Cassian. I want this, it’s good,” she adds and to show him she rolls her hips and links her legs behind his thighs, her lips reaching up to capture his in an encouraging kiss. He’s slow to move, slow to push, as he feels her body below his. Her hands busy themselves by scaling his back, his hips, before she nips at his ear and moans at the quick buck he gives in response. “We have all night for slow. I want you to fuck me now, okay?” 

Cassian practically bursts right then, her low words in his ear making his brain fizzle as he starts to pick up the pace. Her sounds grow and soon he’s looping an arm under her knee and opening her wider to his thrusting, deepening their connection as much as he can get. She keens as each snap of their hips together sounds out around them, her lips finding his in a messy kiss that makes him groan as her teeth sink into his lip. He can’t hold himself back from the way his thrusts become frantic, how his body tightens as he tangles a hand in her hair and tucks his face into the hollow of her neck. When he comes inside of her, his seed spilling out in thick bursts, she cries out with her own release and lets her body shiver around his collapsed frame as sweat mingles on their skin. 

They lay together for what feels like hours, his body cradled in her embrace as their breathing slowly returns to normal. When Cassian’s brain finally becomes something akin to functioning, he shifts and looks up at her, surprise filling him as he takes in the pleased look on her lips. 

“You love me, eh?” He asks, his voice husky in the low light. 

“It wasn’t obvious already?” She answers and brushes her fingers through his hair, her eyes searching his. 

“I just thought I was being crazy,” he says and Jyn shakes her head in disbelief, eyes rolling with exasperation. 

“You know, your accent gets thicker when you’re being vulnerable. It’s kinda cute,” she teases and he can’t stop the smile that fills his face, his body curling around hers once again as he tries to keep them as close as he possibly can. He loved this woman. He loved, loved,  _ loved her _ , and she loved him and maybe that was all he needed for all of the struggles he’d face to be worth it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooooo we're almost there! I'm putting together the final chapters and finally closing out this story. Only a few more to go. Thank you so much for all the reads and kudos and comments, you guys are wonderful!


	12. THREE YEARS & ONE DAY POST

_Jyn_

The sight seeing was going terribly. In that they hadn’t actually left the room to go see any sights since they’d fallen into bed together the night before. Jyn wasn’t mad - in fact, she was the complete opposite as Cassian railed into her from behind, his chest pressed to her back and his breath ghosting across her ear. 

“Fuck,” she grunts as the sensations start to overwhelm her, his hand between her thighs and his length pressing just the right spot inside of her. 

“I’m almost there,” he pants and Jyn’s arms give out, collapsing her torso onto the mattress and changing the angle to push him deeper as he starts to lose his rhythm. There’s a blinding moment where she feels his teeth in her shoulder, one hand wrapped around her chest with his palm on her breast, the other circling her nub frantically before she blacks out. The moan that escapes her would be embarrassing if Jyn felt any embarrassment for the orgasm that’s burning through her, Cassian’s own release chasing after hers as his hips crash into her backside and he groans against her. 

His frame collapsing onto her back nearly topples them over before Cassian pulls out and drags her torso onto his chest, his hand palming aimlessly against her head until his fingers find her cheek and tilt her up towards him. She sighs into his mouth, exhaustion and contentment making her body weak as he starts to once more catch his breath. 

“Not to hate on previous versions of us, but I’m pretty sure we’ve never fucked that well before,” she says eventually, enjoying his fingers playing in the loose strands of her hair. 

“Probably not. I just hope it’s not a one-time thing,” he adds with a laugh that she feels riddle through her in a pleasant way. 

“It won’t be. I have faith in us figuring it out if  _ only _ because that was really, really satisfying.” 

“Fine then. Challenge accepted.” 

There’s a drawn out silence as they take comfort in laying together, skin touching and body heat mingling with the air from the fan. Jyn can’t help but try to lie still, desperate for this moment to go unbroken for as long as she can will it to last. She didn’t want tomorrow to come. She didn’t want Cassian to go back to the city she no longer lived in, months spanning between when they’d see each other again. It was an uncomfortable thought and saying it aloud would make it real so Jyn did what she did best and tucked the thought away and out of reach of the happiness she’d let grow since she woke up in his arms. 

There’d been no thought of running today. No thought of abandoning him, of escaping the tight fears that had plagued her every time before. Sure, there was a nervousness in her that came with the worry that they would fuck it all up again, but Jyn chose to focus on trusting herself and the person she’d become. If she was ever going to move on she needed to remember that she wasn’t who she used to be and that only came with the careful reinforcement of that idea over time. 

“I’m guessing you don’t really want to see any of the city?” Jyn says after a little while, twisting to look at him as he slowly opens his eyes to meet hers. 

“I do but this has been a great substitution,” he answers with a small smile, his brow soft. The love he’d spoken about earlier, that had had him so afraid, was clearly shining back at her as he shifted to watch her more fully, his gaze moving over her face affectionately. 

“We can still go. It’s not that late and you should see the river at night. It’s really beautiful,” Jyn offers lightly. Cassian’s grin grows and he leans towards her, his lips finding hers in a quick kiss before he pulls back. 

“I’ve got beauty right here, but if you think I should see it then that’s what we’ll do. Just let me have another few minutes with you though, before I have to share you with the rest of the world,” he adds and Jyn’s heart flops dangerously in her chest, her want for him only increasing more with every moment. 

Tomorrow was going to suck. The next few months were going to suck. How was she going to do this without him now that she knew what it was like to have him back? To have the Cassian from before, the one who was rough around the edges but kind and caring once you got past his hardened exterior? He wasn’t the broken man that had once laid beside her all those painful nights, his touch barely there but for the intense moments of conflict and release that had been their trademark. Sure, all of those versions were still him, but the man currently holding her to his chest took care in his touch, in his words, and his laugh didn’t sound strangled like it once did. He was different and she was certain that she would miss this Cassian most of all when he got on his flight the next day. 

Jyn didn’t want to think about it, not really. She’d take the days as they came and put one foot in front of the other until they could decide what came next. Maybe he’d move, or she would, or they’d take a posting abroad where they could both make a difference and still be side by side. The future didn’t have to mean that they were apart - it could mean that they were just biding their time before they could be together again and Jyn had to focus on that because anything else wasn’t going to do her or them any good. 

They take their time getting up and showering, their touch never far from each other as they move through the small room. Cassian takes care to show his affection whenever he can - his fingers gentle, lathering soap through her hair, or his lips soft on her shoulder as he leaves to collect his things from his room. 

“This is okay, right?” He asks as she lets him back into her room, his duffle bag in his hands as he stands awkwardly in the entryway. “My flight is early and I just - I assumed it would be - “ 

“If I could cancel your flight and spend the rest of my mission with you living out of that bag in my room, I would,” Jyn declares blandly, her hands busy tying her damp hair up into a bun at the back of her head. “So yes, please do assume you’re spending the night here before you have to leave. I wouldn’t expect it any other way. You almost ready to go?” 

In the reflection of the mirror, Jyn catches Cassian’s smile cracking across his face, his expression almost coloured with disbelief as he shakes his head and puts his bag down in the corner. She watches as he grabs out a clean set of clothes, stripping down to change into them and out of the outfit from the day before that he’d worn to his room. 

Turning to lean against the dresser, Jyn watches as he pulls on his pants, his attention focused on his belt as she appraises his exposed torso. She can’t help but notice the layer of bulk he’d put on since she’d last seen him naked - he was no longer the starved bone and muscle body that she’d known and the realization gave her a pulse of desire that mixed with a sense of relief. He looked  _ healthy _ and that combined with the smile that never seemed to waver as he caught her watching him made Jyn want to pull him close and never let him go. 

“No, leave it,” Jyn blurts as Cassian reaches to grab his discarded clothes from the bed. She leaps forward and grabs his shirt, turning and shoving it into her dresser. “Forget you saw any of that pathetic display,” she orders as she turns back to face him, her cheeks flushed. 

“Pathetic?  _ Mi amor, te adoro _ ,” he murmurs, easing closer and resting his palms on her hips. Jyn feels the blush climb down her neck as Cassian squeezes her sides and brushes his lips across her brow. “Let’s go get some dinner and see this river of yours.” 

* * *

They wander the city and eventually find themselves in the middle of a night market, the laneways teeming with street food vendors, kitsch shops and little counters displaying wares of every variety. Walking close to one another, Jyn revels in the bustle of people pushing this way and that as the heat from the milky air makes her skin slick with sweat. When Cassian settles his hand on her lower back during a particularly dense cluster of bodies, she nearly leans into his touch, unwilling to be apart for as long as she could stretch it. 

“What is  _ that _ ?” Cassian asks as they pass a vendor with a steaming grill, skewers of various things spread across the hot coals. 

“Scorpions, I think,” Jyn answers and glances up at him, her lips forming a solid line at what she knew was coming next. 

“Let’s try it,” he insists, looking down at her with an excited glint in his eye. 

She remembered this Cassian from Scarif - he’d always been wandering the markets, trying whatever weird thing that had smelled okay from the roadway. Jyn had thought it was cute then, if not a little too much for her senses, and she’d watched him eat everything from bats to odd vegetables that you couldn’t find anywhere else. She’d also watched him suffer for that exploration, his stomach more than once making him look sour through their morning meetings as he suffered gastro issues that he’d tried to hide. 

“Do you really want to spend our last night together praying to the porcelain god?” She challenges, her hand on his chest as he watches the man turn over the skewers. 

“I’ve got ‘zithro - “ 

“That takes a few hours to kick in!”

“Fine, no, I guess you’ve got a point,” he surrenders, lifting his arm to wrap around her shoulders as he steers them down the street towards a bustling noodle shop. Inside they order and collect their servings, finding a pair of plastic chairs and a table on the edge of the street. 

They people watch as they eat, their eyes trailing after the tourists and locals alike as they go about their lives, moving from place to place, oblivious to the world around them. Jyn regales him with made-up life stories for particularly colourful characters, her tales weaving from the tame gardener to the male gigolo being reluctantly dragged by his partner through the side streets.

“You should write a book about these people,” Cassian chuckles, his hands busy wiping broth from his mouth as he finishes his meal. Jyn turns to him and lifts a brow, watching as he looks at her with a questioning look. 

“A book? Really?” She counters to his shrug. 

“You’ve just got a way with describing things. I’d read it.” 

Jyn lets the idea sink in, turning back to her ramen and picking away at the vegetables before finally feeling full enough to set the rest of it aside. When she finally looks up again she finds Cassian watching her with a searching look, his fingers picking at his nails nervously as the silence drags on. 

“What?” She questions after he doesn’t shy away from her returning stare, the challenge unspoken between them. 

“Is this really our last night?” He asks eventually, his eyes never leaving hers. If this had been six months ago, a year, he wouldn’t have been able to look her in the eye. Not for one second would he have been able to face off with this question, the doubt of his worth would have made him run from the confrontation and Jyn knew it. But now he was able to broach the situation with a calm steadiness, still marked with nerves, but not frantic weariness and it somehow gave her the courage to face it too. 

“What do you mean, Cassian?” She responds, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the table. She wanted his concerns to be clear, to make sure they were talking about the same thing. It was too important to get lost in miscommunication this time. 

“Ever. Do you know what you want when you finish here? Is this just a fling that ends when I go to the airport tomorrow?” Jyn watches as he twists his hands, his voice steady but his words curt, almost like he was hesitating to say them aloud. 

“I don’t know what I want, not really, not long term at least. I  _ do _ know that I  _ don’t  _ want this to be a fling that ends with you going to the airport. But, if that’s what you were thinking this was since last night then I’ve got a few choice words for you as to how you could improve communicating that fact,” she adds with a lifted brow. Cassian’s head shakes and he leans forward, grabbing her hands with his own. 

“That’s not what I meant at all. I’m trying to figure out what happens next without making an ass of myself. I didn’t want a fling last night and I still don’t - I want  _ you _ . Whatever that means with what comes next. I want you to trust me to - to be someone you want to be with.” 

“Trust goes both ways,” she whispers lowly, watching as he quirks his lip up in a half smile. 

“So not a fling. Good. And we’ll talk about what happens after your contract ends at some point?” 

“Yes. And we’ll visit each other until then, right? I can probably afford a trip back every other month but - “ 

“Of course I’ll visit you. Didn’t I fly halfway around the planet to see you?” She snorts at that and shakes her head, getting to her feet. 

“You think I’ll believe that lie - you came out here to eat scorpions and be the big shot security guy. I can see right through you,” she jokes as she pulls him up to standing, her grip guiding his arm back around her shoulders as she tucks into his side. She couldn’t help but feel like she fit perfectly here, his warmth a comfort rather than a bother as the warm evening air swirls around them. 

“You’ve got me. Had nothing to do with a foul-mouthed rookie who isn’t afraid to call me on my bullshit,” he laughs, ducking to press a kiss to her forehead as they walk. 

The river comes into view just as Jyn is laying into him about his most embarrassing moments from the training, her recollection sharp as she recounts him stumbling over the topic of sex in the field. 

She barely notices the reason they'd even ventured out at all - the flickering lights hanging overhead or the rippled reflections of the temples in the water, their lighting stretching like waves of gold. All she does notice is the way he pulls her closer, how he tucks her against a pillar of the bridge before stealing a kiss from her lips. When they return to their walk Jyn feels giddy with desire, with hope, and she lets herself be steered down the sidewalk and back towards their hotel.

Back in her room they move slowly, their arms looping around each other as Jyn lifts to capture his lips with hers. She steers him back towards the bed and drops her hands to work at his belt until his pants are loose around his waist. He doesn’t protest as her fingers drag the fabric down his legs to form a pool at his ankles, her nails grazing back up his stomach to lift the shirt from his frame. Almost insistently, Cassian growls and tugs at the hem of her own shirt, effectively pulling it free before she can stop him. 

“Lay down,” she murmurs between kisses, her hands on his chest urging him back towards the mattress. He goes willingly, crawling back and ignoring how he’s exposed to her greedy gaze, his body flush under his darker complexion. Jyn follows him slowly, stripping the jeans from her hips before kneeling on the edge of the mattress and letting her palm slide up his leg. Clad only in her underwear, Jyn bends to run kisses along his skin starting at his thigh and working her way up his hip to his chest before reaching his mouth. 

Cassian meets her with a deep kiss, his tongue tasting hers as he holds her close to him. One hand snakes around to the band of her bra and flicks the hooks open, a groan escaping from his throat as the garment comes loose and he’s able to lift a palm to cup her breast. Jyn sighs and feels her body tighten with want before she smiles and pulls back. With a creeping grin, she begins her trail back down his chest and rids herself of her bra as she goes. She reaches his length and runs her nails gently from root to tip, her breath ghosting over him and causing him to buck instinctively. 

“ _ Jyn _ ,” he whispers, breathless, as she flicks her tongue over the head. 

“Shh, let me,” she replies and takes him in her mouth. He tastes of sweat and  _ Cassian _ and she finds herself shifting position to be more comfortable as she prepares to settle in, dipping to take him deeper. Jyn revels in the sounds he makes as she works him with hands and lips, her tongue looping around his reddened skin before she bobs and sucks at the sensitive tip. 

“I’m not going to last - ah - if you keep doing that,” he worries as his hand slips into her hair, guiding but not forcing her movements as his hips roll up. 

“Is that really so bad?” She answers softly before swallowing him deeper. He jerks at the feeling and Jyn stutters her breath, pulling back to lift a brow in his direction. 

“ _ Lo siento mi amor, ¡pero ven aquí ya! _ ” He growls and Jyn smiles at the loss of control he has, slipping into his native tongue as she gives one more lick before crawling up beside him. 

“No need to get demanding now,” she teases, her lips hovering over his and drawing him up to meet her halfway. Cassian brackets her face with his palms, his stomach tightening as he lifts to meet her and deepen the kiss again. When she feels steady again, Jyn moves to straddle him and lets his hands explore her skin, drifting from neck to breast and then further still. She lets him tease her entrance and he moans when he finds her slick, his fingers slipping inside as she tries not to shiver at the contact. “I want you in me now,” she whimpers and he doesn’t make her wait, his fingers withdrawing before guiding himself inside of her in a slow thrust. 

They move together like one body, Cassian’s hips lifting to meet each of her downward presses as his mouth works across her skin. Her hands cling to the back of his neck, his shoulders, as he guides her movements slower, achingingly slow, and she tries to keep herself together. Jyn feels her orgasm building and when Cassian nips along the cord of her neck she lets a sound escape that’s almost inhuman. He chuckles and does it again before rocking his hips a bit quicker, his hands tight on her waist as she rolls to meet his thrusts. 

There’s a drawn moment when Cassian’s pace loses its rhythm and Jyn feels his body tightening, his breath coming in quick pants against her shoulder as she holds him to her. She pulls him infinitely closer and feels her body curling around his, her whole being pushing faster towards the precipice as she goes. When she comes it’s like a blast ripples through her body, her cry escaping from her throat as he jerks up into her and finds his release in a desperate push. She feels shaky as she comes down from her high, her skin buzzing as Cassian leaves kisses across every bit of flesh he can reach without putting too much distance between them. 

Tears threaten her then, burning the backs of her eyes as she clings tighter to him, unwilling to separate from him as she feels like she’s coming apart at the seams. She’d be embarrassed if she wasn’t so scared of breaking this moment, of what they’d finally found here being torn away from them when he leaves in the morning. 

“Shh, Jyn,” he whispers, sensing her tears and holding her to his chest as his nose nuzzles against her neck. “It’s okay.” 

“I know,” she chokes, swallowing back the tears before they can fall. “I know. I just - I  _ know _ .” Cassian threads his fingers through her hair and tilts her head back so he can catch her eyes, his look searching. 

“Tell me, where have these tears come from?” He asks softly, his thumb brushing one away. 

“It’s nothing,” she answers, forcing a laugh as he rolls his eyes. 

“Don’t start throwing up barriers when I’m still  _ inside you _ ,” he chuckles and Jyn can’t help the snort that escapes her. Her gaze finally meets his willingly and she sighs, taking a moment to center herself. 

“It’s just been - so  _ hard _ ,” she pauses, her knuckles drifting along his jaw. “That time you kissed me - the first time. I knew it was going to be tough with everything else that was going on in my life but I had no idea. And now you’re here and I feel like maybe we’ve finally figured it out but now you’ve got to leave again. It’s like we keep meeting on the wrong foot and tonight it felt like - like I was  _ okay _ . But you’re leaving again. It’s stupid.” 

“No, it isn’t. I feel it too,” he adds before easing himself back down onto the mattress and taking her with him. He wraps himself around her, their legs slipping between one another as his hand lifts to cup the back of her neck to keep her close. “But we’ll figure it out, alright? I’m a big shot security guy and you’re the foul-mouthed rookie, that’s got to work in our favour right?” 

Jyn can’t help the laugh that escapes her and she lifts her fingers to graze through his stubble, her touch gentle.

“Fine. Yes. It will. I just think I’m impatient for when it will be the right time,” she grumbles. 

“Me too. I’m going to propose something,” he says, making sure to catch her eyes. “When you come in for your debrief, come stay with me for a weekend or something. Until then we can think about what we want and what we do next. Then we can go from there?” 

“That’s so far away,” she mumbles and Cassian laughs, capturing her lips with his. 

“It’ll work in our favour this time. Say you’ll do it,” he presses and Jyn nods, somehow inching closer. 

“I will. I’ll come with all of the plans that are acceptable to me. I expect a detailed analysis from you too, since I’ll have endless hours to work on my plans while I’m here.” 

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” 

“I love you, Cassian,” she whispers a while later, her breathing evening out as she hovers at the edge of sleep. He only tightens his arms around her and wills her into sleep in his arms. 

* * *

The beeping of Cassian’s alarm makes Jyn jump awake, her arms shooting out across the mattress as she finds herself alone. Her heart thuds painfully in her chest as her eyes slowly start to focus, the mattress cold from where Cassian had laid the night before. Had he already left? Had he even been here or had she made the whole day up in her head? The tenderness between her legs said no but when she looks around the room he’s nowhere to be found, the dark morning light slowly starting to creep through the windows. 

“Cassian?” Jyn whispers, her voice raw as she sits up and pulls the sheet around her shoulders. There’s a crash in the bathroom and Cassian stumbles out into the room, his eyes wide and his body bare but from the jeans he wears loosely at his hips. 

“Why are you awake?” He says breathlessly, coming to kneel on the edge of the bed. He reaches his hand to her jaw so he can rub his thumb along her chin, soothing the nerves from her brow. 

“I thought you’d already left,” she answers evenly, working to keep the waver out of her voice. He was here and he hadn’t left in retaliation like she’d used to. She scolds herself for the thought and lifts her hand to his, leaning into his touch as she pushes the negative thoughts from her waking mind. She was better than this now - she  _ trusted  _ him and that only came by stomping out those fears.

“No, but I do have to leave soon. I was hoping to not wake you until I had to go,” he adds as his eyes search hers. 

“Oh,” she pauses, leaning towards him and lifting her palm to his chest. “I had hoped for a proper goodbye,” she whispers and let’s her hand graze down the trail of hair that leads to his jeans. 

“Fuck, I miscalculated  _ that _ ,” he mutters roughly. Jyn laughs and tugs his pants until he’s toppling down onto her, her hands sinking into his hair as she draws his mouth to hers. 

The kiss is bruising, intense, and Jyn scrambles to push the fabric from his body enough so that she can wrap her hand around his length. She finds it already hard and she grins into his mouth, her palm working against the skin to make him rut into her grip in response. She doesn’t hold back another second, lifting her hips so he can slip inside and letting a yelp escape her as he pushes into the hilt. Cassian moans loudly then, fucking into her heat as his hands fly across her torso, grasping and pressing to push himself deeper, to find himself close enough to crawl into her skin. His breathing quickly turns to pants and Jyn clutches him to her, letting her legs link behind his back as his thrusts push them up the mattress. 

Jyn doesn’t complain when her skull taps the headboard, her body on fire as Cassian groans and tugs on her nipple with his teeth. She lets her nails scrape down his back as his momentum quickens and the sounds escaping him turn desperate. He comes with a punishing final thrust, his body jolting against her with every pump of his release inside of her. 

Her laughter sits at the edge of her tongue, her grin wide as he mumbles something into her shoulder and slowly comes down from his high. She tries not to let the laugh slip at the realization that he barely had his pants past his butt, his eagerness for one final fuck making him lose all sense of awareness. To say she was pleased that he lost control so easily around her would be an understatement - she was absolutely unwilling to forget one second of this moment as she tucked her contentment into her memory. 

“You didn’t finish, did you?” He questions as he slowly comes back to himself, his cheeks ruddy with his effort. 

“No but I’ve got - Cassian!” She shrieks as he pulls out of her abruptly and scrambles down the mattress, his beard scratching its way down her skin and between her thighs. 

“I’ve gotta go soon,  _ mi amor _ . I can’t leave you like this - you’ll never forgive me,” he insists and pries her legs apart from where she’s tried to close them from his inspection. She was a mess - she needed a shower and she didn’t need him seeing her up close like this, not after what they’d just done. 

“I will - I  _ will _ , you don’t have - ahh,” she feels her insides tighten as he flicks a finger over her nub, his breath hot against her core. 

“ _ Joder _ ,” he moans as he looks at her slit, his eyes glassy with want as he licks his lips. " _ Let me _ ,” he begs and looks back to where she’s biting her lip, nerves ratcheting up her arousal more with every second. 

She nods and he doesn’t waste a minute, diving in with tongue and fingers and lips to assault her center like a man starved. Her body takes it all like it’s a house on fire, keening and jerking as he licks and curls his fingers inside her. She can’t remember a time when she’s ever been worked so quickly to the peak, the moan escaping her probably loud enough to be heard across the street. Cassian doesn’t let up as she feels herself cresting, her hands yanking at his hair as he pushes her closer to the edge. When he hums against her it’s enough to make her vision turn white, her whole body going rigid as she cries out. 

“ _ Jyn _ ,” he murmurs reverently against her skin, her brain foggy as she tries to remember when exactly he’d crawled back up from between her legs to rest on his side next to her. His lips graze against her neck, nibbling at a place beneath her ear as she lifts a hand to draw his attention back up to her face. His kiss is far more gentle than anything she could have imagined from the Cassian who had just made her scream this morning. His touch is soft as he lets himself linger in his attention, his tongue mingling with hers as she sighs. “I don’t want to go,” he mumbles between pecks of his lips. 

“You have to - your flight,” she whispers in return, knowing full well that he needed to go but not wanting to let him leave. 

“I know. I  _ know _ ,” he adds and swears under his breath, resting his forehead against hers for another second before he reluctantly pulls away. 

Jyn watches from the bed as he pulls his pants back into place, his attention focused purely on getting dressed and quickly gathering his things together. When he finally has everything in one place, his bag in hand and his hair combed into some semblance of respectful appearance, he glances back at her and closes his eyes, shaking his head. 

“What?” She asks at his look, her brow lifting. 

“I can’t - I don’t - you look too good to just walk away from,” he replies and drops his bag once more, swooping down to grab her for one final kiss that makes her ache. “You’ll see me, at your debrief - yes?” She nods and Cassian growls, holding her close for another second before finally drawing back and gathering his things again. 

“Cassian?” She calls as he pulls his bag over his shoulder. 

“Yes, love?” He counters and the endearment makes her insides curl. 

“I love you.” 

And she does. Endlessly, she thinks, which makes it all the more challenging when he smiles and kisses her one more time before turning on his heel and stalking purposely out of the room. 

Beyond the door to her room she hears the elevator chime and the metal doors open and close and she knows he’s gone, her chest tight with the growing distance. She could do this. She only had a few more weeks in the field and then she’d see him again. A few more weeks and they could figure out what came next. 

When Jyn finally crawls out of bed later that morning the sun has risen enough to light up the room with speckles of fiery dots that scatter across the furniture. She takes it as a sign of the beauty in the day ahead and makes her way to the shower. It’s only after, when she comes back from her shower to get ready for the day, that she spots the pile of clothes folded on her desk chair with a note tucked in between. 

_ Jyn, _

_ It was cute to witness your thievery in plain sight. Bring these back to me when you come to see me and I’ll let you exchange them for new ones, no criminality required. Miss you already.  _

_ Love, C. _

She loved, loved,  _ loved _ him and she couldn’t wait to get back to the city to see him again after so many months of painful struggle. For the first time in forever, Jyn felt hopeful of what was to come, her future full of possibilities that hadn’t existed prior to Cassian and the confidence he inspired in herself. She was ready to take on what came next. She was ready to move past Scarif and her childhood and the hurt it had caused. Pulling on one of his remaining shirts, Jyn wraps her arms around herself and closes her eyes, finally feeling like she had found her  _ home _ . 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, this is the last formal chapter - the next one is sort of an epilogue rather than a consecutive timeline (in a way). I'm hoping you've liked the journey so far and that it's been worth the angst to get here. Feel free to drop me a note or reach out - lollercakesff on Tumblr - if you have any feels you can't get out here ;) Thank you all for following along!


	13. FIVE YEARS POST

_Together_

**_+AND ONE MONTH POST_ **

“You’d think the Alliance would put us up in something a bit more… - “ 

“Austere?” Cassian finishes for Jyn, his voice light as he drops his duffle bag on the floor and comes to stand beside her, his palm resting at the curve of her spine. She keeps her gaze on the bank of windows stretching across the living room wall, the bright light from the midday sun shining on her face. 

“Yeah. Or an apartment that was a bit more comparable to the locals,” she adds lowly, finally turning to look up at him. Her expression is trying hard to be measured but he sees the hesitation in her brow and the tightness around her smile, the tell-tale signs of her worries eking out amongst her excitement. 

“Well, you’re the deputy of the whole operation. You’re a big wig now so you get the fancy places.” His hands lift to her shoulders and he squeezes, his body edging closer to hers as she leaves a gentle kiss on his wrist. “It’s one of the perks of the job. You’ll get used to it.” 

“Will I?” She wonders aloud and he can’t help but pull her closer, his lips pressing to her forehead as she wraps her arms around his waist. 

They’d talked about this for weeks, had gone through every scenario and every outcome and they’d decided it was worth the risk to move from their comfortable apartment in the city to take on this new job abroad. Jyn had been offered the role after a string of increasingly complex missions, her glowing reviews and building capacity seemingly opening doors to her she hadn’t thought possible. Cassian had stood behind her, his own career growing as he ventured out on consulting work and specialty projects for the Alliance in the months and years since Scarif. They were at the crux of their working lives where they could either take the leap to new paths or settle into what they’d grown familiar with. Neither of them seemed keen to settle, not just yet. 

And so Jyn had taken the position and Cassian had switched to full-time remote work and they’d sold mostly everything back home to relocate to a new country with new colleagues and new scents and languages to dive into. 

“You will. But you’re not worried about the apartment, are you?” He asks after a few moments of their embrace, his breath ghosting across her hair. She tightens her arms and nuzzles into his shoulder, tucking her forehead in for another moment. 

“What if it happens again? And I’m responsible for it and we fall apart again?” She whispers into his chest, hiding. 

“If it happens then we face it - together. That was our agreement, remember? Chirrut and Baze are only a phone call away and we know what we’re doing. We’ve worked so hard to be here and we’ll be okay. This isn’t Scarif, Jyn. It’s going to be different - and it’s - it’s going to be good,” he responds, easing back to lift her chin up so he can look in her eyes. The stunning green blinks back at him and he can’t help himself - leaning down to capture her lips with his. 

The kiss is slow, a promise, and by the end of it her back is pressed to the windows and a smile has broken out on her face. 

“You know, I could get used to these windows. Perhaps one night we’ll have to take advantage of them… Test out how strong they are or something,” she sighs into his mouth, her fingers in his hair as she pulls him infinitely closer. 

“One night? Not now?” Her returning shock tastes good on his tongue and he drops his hands to her hips, lifting her up until her back is flush against the glass and her legs have wrapped around his body. 

“They can see us,” she murmurs in between kisses, her breathy moans sliding over his skin as he grinds up against her. 

“Only if they look up - way up - to your regal penthouse apartment.” 

“Stop - it’s  _ our _ apartment,” she says on a groan as a hand grazes the side of her breast. He chuckles into her collar and tugs at the hem of her shirt, pulling it up and over her head. When she doesn’t protest he doubles his efforts and runs his hands over every inch of exposed skin, the touch leaving burning trails as they go. Not one to be unmatched, Jyn pulls at his shirt too, tossing it to the side as she nips at the shell of his ear. 

Gasping into her ministrations, Cassian feels his body tense as her fingers work on his pants, pulling the clasps until they’re held up purely by the pressure of her thighs against the fabric. Jyn grins at the realization and eases herself down from where she’s wrapped around him, turning on her heel to head towards the sparsely furnished bedroom. 

“Where are you going?” Cassian growls, watching her with panting breaths. Jyn reaches up and releases the clasp on her bra, dropping it to the floor as she looks back at him over her shoulder. 

“To christen the new bed - you coming?” A moment later her pants have been shimmied down her hips and he’s hopping after her, his feet stumbling as he toes off his shoes and pushes his own pants down his legs without tripping. 

They tumble onto the bare mattress and he moans as she cradles him against her, his skin hot against hers as he tries to meld them together with sheer will. There’s no more talking - only half-swallowed sounds and keening breaths as they chase each other from one peak to the next. 

Afterwards, as they lay together under their new ceiling, in their new apartment, worlds away from where they’d finally figured out how to live, Jyn turns to Cassian and brushes her fingers along his stubble, watching as he looks at her with a steady gaze. 

“You’ll tell me if it gets too hard, right?” She asks quietly, her eyes searching. Cassian lifts his hand to capture hers, holding it between them. 

“We’re in this together. We’re a team. I tell you my shit, you tell me yours. Right?” She nods and he shifts to pull her closer until she’s resting against his chest, her ear over his heart. “Besides, who else am I going to talk to all day if I work from home? By the end of this you’ll be asking me not to tell you anything.”

She can’t help the snort that escapes her, her arms tightening around him and never wanting to let go. 

* * *

**_+AND FOUR MONTHS POST_ **

“I’m assuming you’re not going to listen to me and go to the doctor today?” Cassian asks from the doorway, his hands busy wiping a towel through his damp hair. 

“They’re just cramps. They go away. Stop bothering me,” she answers, rolling over with a huff and pulling the pillow over her head. Cassian sighs and moves to the dresser, pulling loose his clothes and getting dressed. He plants a kiss on her exposed foot, avoiding her brisk kick towards him, before he heads back out to his office and settles in for the day.

Two days pass before Jyn is back on her feet, her colour having returned and her hair piled atop her head in a messy bun. 

“Ah, she lives!” He crows as she finally joins him in the kitchen, her pajamas clinging to her in all the right ways to distract him. 

“I told you it would pass!” She grumbles, reaching for the coffee he’s made and pouring herself a cup. He watches her over the top of his laptop screen, his gaze measuring. “What?” She barks, frowning under his scrutiny. 

“It’s just,” he pauses and lowers the screen a bit, eyes locked on hers. “You never got cramps before. Or at least not that you told me about. And this time you were down for a few days and we’re in a new place with all sorts of weird bugs and crazy diseases you’ve never built immunity to. Sue me for being worried, is all.” 

“Come on, don’t guilt trip me,” she moans, leaning forward on her forearms as she tries to hide in her mug. “Women get cramps for five billion reasons. Besides, I’m up - I’m feeling much better and I’m going to work!” 

Cassian’s eyes follow her as she stands up abruptly, looking at the clock before heading off towards the bedroom. She’s gone for only a few minutes before he hears the shower running and his attention turns back to his work. 

He wasn’t going to be concerned about it if she wasn’t - she knew her body best and he’d worked hard not to press her on things if she pushed back. He knew better then to put his foot in that trap again, especially if it was something as benign as period cramps. 

A week later and Jyn is dragging him into their apartment, her breath hot on his neck as she pulls at his tie and pops a few buttons from his shirt. He can’t complain, not as she clings to him and sucks at a tender spot on his neck. 

“Bedroom,” he murmurs in between explorations of his own, his hands busy pulling her wrap dress apart until the fabric hangs open from her shoulders. She kicks off her shoes and he pulls her hair loose from it’s clips and before she can even capture her breath he’s on his knees with his face between her legs. 

She tries to remain upright, her hand shooting out to grip the dresser, but his ministrations make her knees weak and with a gasp and a jerk his hands capture her as she nearly falls from the press of his tongue between her folds. With her back on the bed and his worries of her collapsing and breaking her neck gone, Cassian dives into her core, tasting and feeling her twist and groan above him. She shivers under his touch and when she gets close he pulls back and turns to shuck the rest of his clothes with a sly grin on his lips. 

“ _ Bastard _ ,” she hisses from her place on the mattress, one arm propping her up and the other already between her legs as she plays with herself. He watches with rapt attention, his hands fumbling on his shirt as she bites her lip and rolls her hips into her own palm. “Leaving me to finish the job. Such a typical - “ 

Cassian doesn’t let her finish that sentence, instead dropping his shirt to the floor and pulling her hand from her center. His lips wrap around her digits, his tongue sliding between her knuckles as he drags the slick from her skin. In his periphery he catches her clenching her thighs together in response and he wishes he was still kneeling before her, her legs locking around his head. 

“You almost done there?” She whispers, her voice hoarse with want. He smiles back at her and drops her hand, moving to the fastenings of his pants as she sits up and scoots towards the edge. She doesn’t ask and neither does he, his lip between his teeth as she wraps her lips around his length. His fingers clench tightly in her hair, his hips slow as they fuck into her mouth. 

They don’t wait much longer after that. Cassian grunts after a particularly bold swipe of her tongue before he pulls back and kneels down beside her to pull her mouth to his. He deepens the kiss and eases her backwards with his hands on her breasts, following her down into the haze of need. Without warning, Jyn shifts and straddles his hips, her breath hot as she laughs at his surprise. 

“Not fair,” he moans as she grinds against his length, the friction making her wet heat coat his skin. 

“Who said it needed to be?” She whispers and lets her nails graze his length. Cassian bucks into the touch and she nips at his ear in rebut. 

“I was trying to celebrate your big promotion by treating  _ you _ , not the other way around,” he responds and she laughs, the deep throaty sound making his skin pebble in anticipation. He’d wanted to keep the attention on her, the pleasure all about her in celebration, but here she was teasing and pushing him to the limits instead. 

“Don’t you think I like this - too?” She says on a caught breath, her hips lifting up as she sinks down onto his length. She takes a moment to catch her breath, her hands pressing into his chest before he rolls his hips up to meet her and she gasps with it. He does it again and she curls her fingers into his skin, her nails scratching down his chest. “I’m so close,” she admits tightly, her body frozen as he continues moving inside her. 

“Good,” he answers and moves one hand between her legs to press her nub in circles. She jolts at the contact and grabs his other hand, drawing it to her mouth and wrapping her lips around his thumb. She starts to ride him then, slowly, her hands eventually pressing his palm down to her breast until he’s squeezing the nipple and causing a curse to fall from her throat. His hand settles over her heart, the beat of it riddling up his arm as she slowly reaches the peak. 

She falls apart above him, around him, and he revels in the feel of her shaking, her muscles clenching around him as he draws the pleasure out. When she comes back to herself, eyelids heavy and lips red, Cassian shifts his hips and drags them until she’s on her back and he can start a slow motion once more. He’s close - so close - and it only takes a few minutes before she’s holding him to her and his forehead is pressed to her chest, his back curved as he tries to push himself deeper. He comes with his length buried to the hilt, her cries like sweet sounds in his ear as she shudders and reaches crests again. 

“I love you,” he whispers when the ability to breathe has finally returned to him, his head lifting from her chest to find her watching him with a punch-drunk look about her. “I’m so proud of you, Head of Op Erso.” 

“If I’d known the sex would be that good when they first mentioned it to me, maybe I’d have taken the job then,” she responds and he shakes his head, sliding up against her until he’s pulled her tight against him. Jyn settles against his chest, her hand resting over his heart as he plants a kiss to her forehead. 

“That comes with experience, I guess. Just imagine what it could be like if you ran the whole region,” he adds and Jyn shakes her head, holding him closer. 

“It’s not the job that makes it better. It’s that look you get in your eyes when someone is telling you how great I am and you’re just so proud, it’s a real turn on apparently,” she admits lowly, hesitant to put it out between them. She’d kept that thought to herself since Scarif, the nerves of being that self-conscious keeping it in the back of her throat for all these years. 

“It’s love. Pure, unadulterated love,” he sighs and Jyn nods, tangling her fingers with his. 

“Do I get a look like that, when people are telling me how good you are?” She stifles a yawn as she says it, daring to glance up at him. 

“You don’t, but it’s because you’ve got a great poker face. You  _ do _ though have a look when you think I’m not watching and it sounds the same. I dream about that look sometimes and they’re always such good dreams.” His voice dips and she can tell he’s tired, his frame settling into the mattress as she nuzzles against him. 

“I’m glad you dream about me,” she whispers and she knows he’s already drifted off, comfortable in the way that only someone who knew how much they were loved could be. 

* * *

**_+AND SEVEN MONTHS POST_ **

“Bodhi, it’s not possible. It’s just not.” He hears her voice from the office as he removes his noise-cancelling headphones, his conference call having just wrapped up and his stomach growling for lunch. “Because it isn’t! So much would have had to have gone wrong for that - no! Of course - Bodhi!” Her voice rises an octave and Cassian pauses at the door, hovering as she slams something down in the kitchen. 

Her Saturday calls back home were never this intense, her conversations with Luke and Bodhi always eventful but never angry. He hung back on his heels as she sighed comically loud, her knuckles bumping into the cupboard as she swears under her breath. 

“He wouldn’t - I can’t tell him without knowing. We’ve never talked about that - it’s always just been - yeah, I know. What kind of adults are we if we can’t even talk about kids?” 

His heart stops, he’s pretty sure. Swallowing feels difficult and he’s sure that he’s gone as pale as a ghost. Was  _ this _ what they were talking about? What she was adamantly telling her best friend was not possible? Kids? Him and Jyn?  _ Kids? _ He could feel himself starting to sweat, a ringing sound filling his head as he tries to process it all. 

“Fine. I’ll go to the clinic when I’m at the office on Monday - no, I’m not going to stress him out until I - Bodhi, don’t pretend like I’m being an asshole. I’m just being practical!” 

Why couldn’t she tell him? Why didn’t she want to talk to him about this? What had he done wrong? The bubbling feeling of doubt ripples in his skin as he tries to think about where they’ve gone wrong, where he’s mis-stepped to make her too uncomfortable to discuss this with her. Certainly nothing had happened after they’d fallen asleep together the night before, bodies clinging to one another as the fan’s breeze drifted over them, right?

God, how had this happened? She had an IUD. She’d told him that and it’d never - how was it even possible? He needed to - 

“Cassian, you want - oh!” She says with surprise as she bursts into the office, pulling herself up short before almost barrelling into him. 

“You’re pregnant?” He sputters, breathless, struggling, as she swallows and tries to hide her fear beneath five layers of withdrawal. She backs out of the room like it was on fire, leaving him to watch as she draws back into herself and retreats to the kitchen. 

He tries not to stalk after her, instead taking a breath and reclaiming his sanity before he moves towards the open space. She leans against the counter and keeps her eyes down, her shoulders hunched around her ears like a protective shell. 

“Jyn,” he murmurs, choosing instead to come up beside her rather than settling across the counter from her. This wasn’t a conversation that needed distance, physical or metaphorical. 

“Don’t!” She yelps as he reaches for her shoulder, drawing back as though his hands were set to burn her. 

“Tell me what’s going on,” he urges, his hands held up in surrender as she tilts her gaze towards the ceiling. He can see it then, the tears she’s trying not to shed, and he wishes he could gather her up in his arms until whatever pain she was experiencing went away. “Don’t lock me out of this, please. Don’t push me away.” 

“What did you hear?” She asks eventually, swallowing thickly before rubbing her face and turning to finally look at him. 

“You’re going to the clinic on Monday,” he answers softly, trying his best to keep from losing his goddamn mind. 

“He thinks - Bodhi thinks maybe I’m pregnant. Which would explain why none of my pants fit properly and why I’ve been feeling like shit and why my tits hurt and why I’m fucking  _ crying _ right now. I told him it wasn’t possible - he knows I’ve got the IUD and it’s not expired or anything and it’s not possible! I’m not, Cassian, I swear I wouldn’t do that to you!” 

“Do - do what?” He counters, easing a step closer and trying to mend the gap between them. She cackles - loud and sharp - before twisting away and kicking the fridge. She recoils instantly and groans, covering her face with her hands. Cassian seizes the moment and gathers her up in his arms, holding her tightly before she squirms and breaks his hold to gasp for breath. 

“I wouldn’t trap you like this! I didn’t get it taken out - I swear I didn’t. It can’t be - it’s not - I’m not pregnant. I’ll go to the doctor on Monday and I’ll get it taken care of and - “ 

“ _ Jyn _ ,” his voice breaks as she steps back again in horror at what she’s said. 

“I didn’t mean it like that! If it was - if I was - I didn’t mean that I’d just get rid of it. I’m sorry - please, I’m so sorry,” she devolves into painful sobs, collapsing onto the floor in a puddle of tears and flushed skin and endless apologies that he barely understands as he pulls her against his chest. 

He carries her to the bedroom and climbs into the bed behind her, an arm under her neck and another thrown around her waist as he curls around her until there’s no telling where she stops and he begins. Cassian holds on until the tears have finally subsided, her fingers loosening their bruising hold on his arms as she starts to calm down. There’s no track of time as he tries to soothe her, his warmth and his lips against her skin as she slowly comes back to herself. 

“I don’t think any of those things,  _ mi amor _ ,” he whispers into her ear eventually, his sigh of relief held in his chest as she shifts and turns over to face him. Her eyes are rimmed red and bloodshot, her hair frazzling around her face. She still doesn’t quite meet his gaze but he thinks they can work on that later. For now, just having her trust him enough to face this head on makes his stress level lower a touch. 

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing she says and he wishes she would stop saying that. 

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he replies, brushing her hair back from her face and leaning in to kiss her gently. 

“I was going to - if there was something to tell - I was going to wait until I knew for sure. I didn’t want to freak you out if it was nothing. If it was something, I was going to tell you, I mean,” she adds almost like she was trying to convince herself of that fact. He didn’t really care about the what if’s - he cared about  _ her _ and the whiplash of emotions that she was feeling. They’d been here before and he didn’t want to go back -  _ couldn’t _ go back - if that’s what was happening. Should he call Baze? Or Chirrut? 

“I believe you,” he pauses, watching as she flickers her gaze up to his before drifting it back down. “What do you think happened?” 

“Apparently they can shift. Or fall out. I keep thinking about those cramps - back a couple months ago? What if something happened then? If it did and I’m - we’re - if it did - “ 

“I’m going to be here with you no matter what,” he interjects as she struggles to put the possibility together. 

They hadn’t talked about kids before, both of them too fucked up from their own childhoods still to really venture into a conversation on the topic. He’d been perfectly happy if she didn’t want them because he hadn’t been sure he wanted them either. But faced with the chance… He knew he would side with whatever she wanted. He knew that. But if she wanted them - he’d be fucking elated, he realized all at once. The rush of it ripples up until it’s clogging his throat and Jyn smiles, her fingers brushing at his cheek. 

“I think I’d want it. Would you - want it?” She asks tentatively, voice rusty. 

“With you? Yes,” he murmurs to Jyn’s widening smile. 

“So if I am - if this stupid thing failed - what are we going to do?” He shifts closer and slips a leg between hers, holding her as tightly as he can. 

“Deal with it when we know for sure? Even if you are, it’s not like you need to make a snap decision. We have time,” he reassures, hand grazing against her spine. “I want though - I’m wondering, I mean, if you’ll call Baze? Talk to him about this? You were scaring me before and I don’t want this to be a set back for you, if it’s something else. Will you do that for me?” 

“Cass - “ 

“ _ Jyn _ ,” he counters, a smile on his lips as he runs a thumb across her cheek. “Please, just a check in? I’m going to call, just because. It might be good for us to talk about it with someone else who can see things clearly. I don’t want to lose you again.” 

“Okay,” she concedes, closing her eyes and tucking her face into his palm. He runs his fingers under her chin and tilts her face up to meet his, the kiss quiet and soft, conveying how he was feeling without saying a word - hopeful, scared, loving. “Hey, isn’t this what got us in this situation in the first place?” Jyn interrupts, her fingers tightening around his wrist as she grazes their lips together. 

“You saying you want me to stop?” He asks, holding his breath. 

“God no,” she laughs and he feels himself relax at the sound, his mind starting to run with all the possibilities that lay before them. 

* * *

**_+AND ELEVEN MONTHS POST_ **

“I can’t believe I have to get on a plane for ten hours like this,” Jyn laments, holding her bag on her shoulder. She refused to let him carry it and he tried to avoid the dirty looks passersby were sending him. 

“You’ll be fine,” Cassian promises, digging out their tickets from his pockets and pulling their passports from his bag. They move towards the desk and he passes the documents to the attendant, smiling as she looks between them. 

“There you go, have a safe flight,” she bids and Jyn grumbles, walking down the gangway with her arms crossed over her chest. 

“What’s got you in a mood?” He asks as he catches up. 

“She was hitting on you - like she didn’t just see me walk by! Clearly, because I’m just fat and not actually pregnant or anything!” She bemoans and Cassian can’t help the bark of laughter that escapes him. The idea was preposterous - so far beyond rational that he didn’t even want to bother with trying to argue against it. “What! It’s true!” 

“Sure,  _ mi amor _ ,” he responds, looping his arm around her side and pulling her down the first ramp towards the plane. 

“This isn’t where we’re supposed to go - we aren’t allowed here,” Jyn squirms, moving back towards the way they’d come. Cassian grabs her hand and drags her back to the waiting flight attendant, handing him the boarding passes to the man’s nod. “You didn’t?” She gasps as they’re led forward onto the plane. 

The seats they’re shown to are huge, padded and segregated and  _ too much _ for what they could afford. The first class area was luxury and Jyn felt out of place as Cassian took her bags and urged her into her seat, shock still rippling through her. 

“You got us first class seats?” Jyn asks when Cassian finally settles in beside her, his hands busy pulling the seatbelt out of the edges of the chair. 

“Of course I did. I had a century worth of points, might as well use them for what will probably be my last flight for a while. Besides, I couldn’t let you sit in economy while I enjoyed the service up here - what kind of partner would I be then?”

“You would  _ not _ have left me in economy, liar!” Jyn scolds and sits back, her fingers quickly working the buttons to move her chair into a full recline before she sits back up and begins playing with the TV. “This is too nice. I’m never going back. You have to provide this level of service every time we fly or I swear to God - “ 

“Shh, you’ll get us kicked out for bad behaviour,” he interjects, reaching and capturing her lips with his own. She settles into the kiss, her hands loosening from their grip in his shirt as she relaxes back and settles a hand on her rounded belly. 

Cassian was somehow glad they were finally heading home, his nerves having been rattling in his chest ever since that fateful afternoon at the doctor’s office where they’d discovered that yes, Jyn’s IUD had failed and yes, she was indeed pregnant. Nearly three months pregnant, at that. The news had almost bowled him over and he’d been worried about everything almost constantly since they’d found out. Chirrut was helping but nothing could really compare to the relief he felt when they finally touched down.

It wasn’t so much that he worried about the baby - that part was easy, he’d argue ( _ ‘The worrying part, not the growing of said baby part,’ _ Jyn insisted). It was that he couldn’t stop worrying about Jyn and how she was trying to pack another year’s worth of work into the five months she’d given herself to stay in her post before she finally went back stateside. She had been wearing herself down trying to get everything done and all he could do was watch from the sidelines, keeping her fed and her feet rubbed as she pushed herself day in and day out. 

By the time they’d finally packed up everything and sent it with the shipping company she was exhausted, emotionally a wreck and doubting the choice to return home. He hated this phase more than any of the others. He could deal with vomit on his shoe, or the flashbang of a hormone-driven fight out of the blue, but nothing prepared him for the nights where she laid in silence in their bed, her body curled around her pillow as she cried. He could do nothing then but hold her and hope that by the time they made it home she would start to feel better. 

The flight back stateside is thankfully uneventful, the long hours made more comfortable by the room to breathe and the kind attendant who manages to spoil Jyn rotten every chance she gets. When it finally comes time to deplane it’s almost sorrowful, their goodbye, and Cassian has to steer Jyn past the attendant on their way down the aisle. 

Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, Cassian slides her bag onto his shoulder next to his own and steers them down the hallway at a leisurely pace. They were in no rush, the lines at customs at this time of night unlikely to give them any issues, and so he eased her pace as they moved together. 

“I’m nervous about being back here,” she whispers as they stand in the elevator alone, the dim lighting casting shadows over her face. 

“Any particular part? Or just all of it?” He asks softly, his fingers tightening on her shoulder. 

“All of it. You’re going back to your job and everyone else I know is fully settled into their lives. What will I have here? A posting I had to leave early because I got knocked up and the distrust of all the men hiring for the jobs I want because of it? I’m not cut out for being a stay at home mom. I’m not good at taking care of children or cooking or any of the stuff I’m supposed to be good at because I’m a woman. You’re so much better at the affection and the staying home part and everyone can see it. What if I can’t do it?” 

“It doesn’t have to change that much. You can take time off for your full leave or you can go back to work as soon as you’re ready. You can even finish working on that story you keep trying to hide from me, if you want to do that. I can switch back any time so whatever you need, we just need to talk it out and iron out the details. The men hiring will all be impressed with how long you stayed on in the field and if they’re not then you don’t want to work for misogynist pigs like that anyways. You’re not alone in this - we’ll figure it out,” he affirms, pressing a kiss to her brow. She hums and rubs her face, sighing as the elevator doors open and the carousels of luggage appear before them. 

Cassian settles her next to a cart and drags their bags off of the rotating conveyor in quick succession, pausing only once to glance at her as she nervously clutches her wrist. He’d sensed the worry emanating off of her these last few months, her quiet fears sneaking under all of their conversations about what came next. There wasn’t much he could do to reassure her except be there, help reinforce his message again and again. Chirrut had tried to explain the process of acceptance and trauma in a way that had made sense for them both but Cassian still struggled with it, hating not being able to do anything tangible to help her more than he already was. His private sessions had taken on gentle reminders that he couldn’t take on the whole world no matter how he tried and it had helped, but it hadn’t solved the anxiety he felt when he saw her struggling. 

“Ready to get home?” He says once all of their things are placed on the cart. Jyn nods swiftly, linking her arms across her chest and stalking towards the customs agent with her papers like a woman on a warpath. 

They make it through the final checkpoint without any issues, Jyn walking ahead of him as he pushes the cart forward. From where he stands he can see the physical stress pouring off of her, her knuckles white and her shoulders tight, and he hates it. Hates that she isn’t sure she belongs here. Hates that maybe she’s doubting the choice to go through with the pregnancy, his deepest and most wretched fear. 

“Jyn,” he calls when his throat begins to feel tight, his body aching for her warmth as she pulls further away. She pauses her step and turns to face him, her expression tight before it shatters and she runs into his arms. Their collision nearly knocks him back a step and he exhales into her hair as she wraps herself around him. “We’re gonna figure it all out, okay?” He whispers into the shell of her ear. She nods and squeezes tighter, her fingers nearly bruising on his neck. 

“I know. I  _ know _ we will. I trust you. I love you. I’m just scared.” 

“Love is for the brave,” Cassian answers as she laughs and pulls back, her hands resting against his neck. 

“A very smart person must have taught you that,” she returns and her lips find his in a quick kiss. 

“No loitering in the exit!” A voice shouts from behind them, deep and booming. Jyn sidles back with a shake of her head, wrapping her arm around his waist and leading them both out into the arrivals gate. 

They step through the sliding doors and are nearly ambushed by the greeting they receive, Bodhi and Luke and Kay surrounding them with hugs and yelps of excitement before they’ve even finished coming down the ramp. In all of the mess of welcomes and hugs hello, Jyn never once lets go of his hand and that’s when he knows for sure. 

Every little thing was gonna be alright. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright folks, there we have it, the final chapter. This one actually took me quite some time to settle on because I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted it to flow. But I've settled on the jumping timeline and hopefully you enjoy the wrap up! Thank you so much for reading and sticking with me on this journey - I know it had some ups and downs but I think that's what makes this ending all the more sweeter. Much love, lollercakes <3


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